EUCKEN  AND  BERGS 


THEIR  SIGNIFICANCE  FOR 
CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT 


E.HERMANN 


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Southern  Branch 
of  the 

University  of  California 


Los  Angeles 


Form  L  1 

B 

3227 

E86K4 


This  book  is  DUE  on  last  date  stamped  below 

tfUL  8  3  1924 

JUL  3  1  1924 

N°V  1  2  1924 

MAY  13 
FEB1 
NOV  9" 

192 

1937 
1959 

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M^Y  4     I92« 

JUL  2  I   ?93» 

JUL  3  u  1920 

NOV  191921 

JAN  3     192?  y 
JaW  2  0  1927 

• 

APR  11  1921? 

1 

EUCKEN    AND    BERGSON 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

Microsoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/euckenbergsontheOOhermiala 


EUCKEN  AND   BeRGSON 

THEIR  SIGNIFICANCE  FOR 
CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT 


BV 

E.  HERMANN 


BOSTON   :   THE    PILGRIM    PRESS 
LONDON  :    JAMES  CLARKE  &  CO. 

19  I  2 


•v. 

PREFACE 


j  While  there  is  an  excellent  general  introduction 
J  to    Eucken's    philosophy  for  English  students- 


36 


•• 


i* 


that  of  his  distinguished  pupil,  Professor  Boyce 
Gibson,  of  Melbourne — and  while  we  can  supple- 
ment our  study  of   Bergson  by  such   scholarly 
discussions  as  those  of  Mr.  A.  D.  Lindsay  and 
,  Dr.    J.  M'Kellar  Stewart,  no  attempt   has  been 
*   made  as  yet  to  present  the  thought  of  Eucken  and 
Bergson  in  its  specific  bearing  upon  the  problems 
of  theology.     It  is  with  a  view  to  supplying  this 
j  lack  in  some  small  measure  that  this  book  has  been 
\  written,  and  any  apparently  one-sided  emphasis 
i  of  certain  aspects  of  their  thought,  as  well  as  the 
r  omission  of  other  aspects  interesting  and  valuable 
j^  in  themselves,  must  be  understood  with  reference 
to  this  controlling  purpose. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  work  of  Eucken 
and  Bergson  is  pregnant  with  theological  implica- 
tions and  suggestions,  and  that  it  contains  power- 
fully formative  elements  for  Christian  thought. 
Eucken's    philosophy,    indeed,    has    justly    been 

5 


Preface 

described  as  a  philosophical  restatement  of  the 
teaching  of  Jesus,  and  his  affinities  with  theology 
are  so  deep  and  explicit  that  the  theological 
student  instinctively  appropriates  the  valuable 
elements  in  his  thought,  and,  swimming  with  the 
current,  as  it  were,  does  not  realise  its  force  as  a 
provocative  and  stimulating  agent.  It  is  only 
where  Eucken's  rejection  of  dogmatic  values 
excites  the  opposition  of  the  positive  theologian 
that  his  impact  upon  Christian  thought  is  fully 
realised.  It  is  different  with  Bergson,  whose 
work  has  not  yet  passed  from  its  critical  to  its 
constructive  stage  and  whose  philosophy  of 
religion  is  yet  to  be  given  us.  In  his  case  a  more 
than  tentative  critique  is  impossible,  while  his 
untheological  training  and  outlook  make  his  thought 
take  a  sharply  provocative  and  suggestive  form. 
My  sincere  thanks  are  due,  in  the  first  place,  to 
Professor  Eucken,  who  has  most  generously 
encouraged  me  by  his  kindly  appreciation  of 
my  past  fragmentary  efforts  in  various  journals 
and  by  his  warm  interest  in  the  preparation 
of  this  book.  To  the  Rev.  Principal  Forsyth, 
D.D.,  of  Hackney  College,  London,  and  to  the  Rev. 
M.  L.  Johnson,  B.A.,  of  Sydney — the  Australian 
Forsyth — I  have  long  been  deeply  indebted 
on  the  theological  side  :  to  the  first  for  initial 
inspiration,  to  the  second  for  my  introduction  to 

6 


Preface 

the  thought  of  Bergson  in  its  theological  implica- 
tions. In  the  section  on  Eucken  I  have  derived 
help  from  Professor  Boyce  Gibson's  book  ;  in  that 
on  Bergson  from  Mr.  Lindsay's,  Dr.  Stewart's,  and 
Mr.  Solomon's.  Among  books  which  I  have 
consulted  with  profit  I  would  specially  mention 
William  James's  "  A  Pluralistic  Universe  "  and 
Professor  Ward's  massive  and  illuminating  book, 
"  The  Realm  of  Ends." 

E.  Hermann. 
London, 

March  1912. 


CONTENTS 

PACK 

CHAPTER  I 
THE  PRESENT  SITUATION  :    A  DIAGNOSIS  -  -         13 

CHAPTER  II 
RUDOLF    EUCKEN     AND    HIS    PHILOSOPHY   OF    LIFE        41 

CHAPTER  III 

RUDOLF  EUCKEN  AND  HISTORICAL  CHRISTIANITY       -        87 

CHAPTER    IV 
HENRI  BERGSON  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CREATIVE 

EVOLUTION 127 

CHAPTER    V 
CHRISTIAN  THEOLOGY  AND  RECENT   PHILOSOPHICAL 

THOUGHT 183 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  217 

INDEX  222 


I 

The  Present  Situation:    A  Diagnosis 


CHAPTER  I 

The  Present  Situation  :    A  Diagnosis 

The  outlook  of  the  twentieth  century  :  optimists, 
pessimists,  and  onlookers — Contrast  with  the  second  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century  :  "  Robert  Elsmere  "  and  Arthur 
H.  Clough  as  types  of  "  sacrificial  "  doubters — Religious 
impressionism  and  eclecticism  of  our  age — "  Light  on  the 
Hills  " — Bankruptcy  of  Naturalism  and  Intellectualism — 
Natural  Science  versus  Naturalism — Superficial  disparage- 
ment of  Intellectualism — The  philosophy  of  the  future  : 
Pragmatist,  Voluntarist,  or  what  ? — Three  elements  of 
modern  thought :  (i)  General  dissatisfaction  with  civilisa- 
tion and  culture,  (2)  Recognition  of  the  truth- value  of 
religious  experience,  (3)  Conviction  of  the  primacy  of  the 
moral  in  knowledge. 


CHAPTER   I 

The  Present  Situation:    A  Diagnosis 

While  it  may  be  the  besetting  tendency  of 
every  age  to  see  itself  storm-tossed  and  churning 
with  revolutionary  and  subversive  forces  beside 
a  preceding  age,  clear  and  unruffled  in  the  magic 
mirror  of  the  enchanted  distance,  the  young 
twentieth  century,  at  any  rate,  is  not  overweighted 
with  pessimism  or  too  deeply  bitten  with  self- 
depreciation.  From  many  quarters  joyous  optimists 
are  declaring  that  the  long-looked-for  good  time 
has  all  but  actually  come.  Devastating  material- 
ism and  arid  intellectualism  alike  have  been 
overthrown  and  transcended  by  a  new  view  of 
life — the  philosophy  of  the  spirit.  They  hear 
that  at  last  the  faith  of  the  twice-born  has  been 
accorded  a  place  in  the  esoteric  temple  of  philo- 
sophic enquiry  and  they  take  courage.  They 
are  informed  that  science  is  at  last  thinking  of 
seeking  initiation  as  a  catechumen  of  the  Holy 
Assembly  and  they  are  cheered.  They  question 
Sir  Oliver  Lodge  and  are  assured  that  it  is  well 
with  the  soul.  They  look  to  Eucken  and  are 
lightened.  They  study  Bergson  and  their  faces 
are  not  ashamed  even  in  the  presence  of  a  Ration- 

13 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

alist  litterateur.  And  this  spirit  of  buoyant 
hopefulness  is  not  confined  to  such  slim  and 
facile  souls.  Men  of  weight  and  sober  divination, 
clairvoyant  to  the  spiritual  issues  of  the  time, 
while  seeing  the  valleys  still  lapped  in  turbulent 
and  yeasting  darkness,  assure  us  that  there  is 
light  on  the  far  hills. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  pessimists  are  saving 
us  from  Chauvinism  by  contrasting  the  trivial, 
volatile,  opportunist  temper  of  our  century  with 
the  heroic  strenuousness  of  the  nineteenth. 
Seen  against  its  disinterested  devotion  to  great 
ideas,  its  passionate  humanitarianism,  its  galaxy 
of  Titans  in  every  field  of  thought,  our  age 
appears  mediocre,  pedestrian,  futile.  There  may 
indeed  be  light  on  the  hills,  but  of  what  avail 
is  light  to  blind  eyes  ?  Is  ours  indeed  the  temper 
to  •  which  great  things  can  come,  the  soil  upon 
which  high  forces  can  operate  ?  Are  we  not 
rather  fractious  children  in  the  market  place  of 
life — unready,  contrary,  difficile,  with  mingled 
puerility  and  precociousness  ?  But  the  pessi- 
mists are  a  small  folk  compared  to  the  crowd  of 
dispassionate  spectators  who  preponderate  in 
every  age — attenuated  souls  who  Gamaliel-wise 
suspend  their  judgment.  The  web  is  too 
bafflingly  crossed  by  threads  of  every  hue  and 
calibre,  they  tell  us.  The  pattern  is  too  crazy, 
the  shuttles  too  blindingly  swift  ;  the  only 
rational  thing  to  do  is  to  wait.  This  attitude  is 
too   well-known   to  need   much   description  ;   it 

14 


The  Present  Situation  :  A  Diagnosis 

is  the  hopeless  temper  of  the  soul  which  forgets 
that  there  is  a  world  in  which  nothing  can  ever 
come  to  those  that  wait. 

We  might  do  worse  than  cast  a  shoulder-glance 
back  to  the  nineteenth  century  with  the  pessimist  ; 
nor  need  we  be  at  all  afraid  that  our  consequent 
self-criticism  will  be  merely  an  illusion  of  the 
enchanted  distance.  Gloss  it  over  as  we  will, 
there  is  in  that  century,  which  many  among  us 
still  claim  as  their  own,  a  certain  heroism  of 
temper  and  magnificence  of  character  which  we 
may  dub  heavy  and  even  priggish  in  our  lighter 
moods,  but  for  the  loss  of  which  our  finer  conscience 
chides  us  through  it  all.  If  one  would  seek  for  a 
convenient  and  popular  illustration  of  this  temper, 
one  might  find  it  in  "  Robert  Elsmere."  At 
first  sight  a  fictitious  character,  and,  above  all, 
one  so  anaemic  and  psychologically  out  of  drawing 
as  "  Robert  Elsmere,"  would  seem  an  unfortunate 
example  to  choose.  And  quite  apart  from  his 
ineffectiveness  as  a  character  in  fiction,  the 
theological  and  religious  position  he  represents 
strikes  us  of  to-day  as  amazing  and  all  but 
impossible.  The  story  of  his  nervous  and 
harrowing  conflict  rings  hollow  and  remote  as  an 
old-world  legend,  and  brings  nothing  of  the  awe 
which  such  legends  inspire.  That  a  man  should 
not  only  be  startled  out  of  his  orthodoxy,  but 
caught  up  into  a  struggle  in  which  soul  and 
reason  alike  reel  in  unspeakable  anguish  by  nothing 
more  formidable  than  a  few  familiar  and  well- 

15 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

ventilated  French  and  German  theories  seems 
less  than  tragic  and  not  without  a  suspicion  of 
comedy  in  our  eyes.  And  yet,  tenuous  and 
neurotic  as  he  is,  and  perhaps  shining  the  more 
brightly  against  the  dim  background  of  his 
weakness,  that  nineteenth  century  heroism  whose 
aureate  lustre  rebukes  the  brazen  penury  of  our 
time  is  typified  in  a  unique  way  in  him.  To  read 
"  Robert  Els  mere  "  understanding^  is  to  look 
into  the  travailing  heart  of  his  age,  and  to  realise 
the  force  of  that  tremendous,  tragic,  all  but 
frenzied  passion  with  which  men  of  that  time 
defended  the  soul's  citadel  against  the  tide  of 
apparently  hostile  powers  that  were  now  crashing 
and  booming  against  the  quivering  walls,  now 
crawling  slowly  and  irresistibly  into  every 
cranny. 

Turning  from  fiction  to  life,  we  get  the  same 
heroic  struggle  with  doubt,  only  less  typical 
because  in  a  far  stronger  and  rarer  soul,  in 
Arthur  H.  Clough.  To  read  the  story  of  his  life, 
and  his  poems  in  the  light  of  that  story,  is  to  get 
a  key  once  more  to  the  nineteenth  century,  and 
a  tonic  of  fine  astringency  for  the  flabby  soul  of 
our  time.  Looking  at  his  boyhood  one  might 
fairly  urge  that  he  was  the  victim  of  an  over- 
stimulated  moral  sense  and  a  premature  moral 
development  ;  but  no  one  can  read  the  story  or 
the  poems  with  open  mind  without  realising  that 
a  soul-struggle  so  titanic  and  unrelieved  cannot 
be  merely  the  morbid  excrescence  of  a  violated 

16 


The  Present  Situation :   A  Diagnosis 

nature.  Wrapped  in  doubt  as  in  a  shirt  of  Nessus, 
prey  to  a  vulture  of  misgiving  that  frayed  every 
nerve  till  each  thread  lay  raw  and  bare,  he  scorned 
to  eat  the  bread  of  compromise  or  to  accept  the 
intellectual  opiate  of  his  age — that  peculiar 
mental  jugglery  by  which  men  rejected  God  and 
Immortality  as  a  fact  and  retained  them  as  a 
highly  respectable  dream,  a  pleasant  medicinal 
fiction.  His  was  that  ruthless  candour  which  is 
like  a  Herod  in  a  man's  breast,  killing  a  thousand 
infants  of  desire  and  sentiment,  and  forswears 
not  only  the  dishonesty  that  compromises  with 
its  doubts,  but  the  deeper  dishonesty  that  shrinks 
from  its  convictions.  Everything  his  conscience 
demanded  of  him  was  paid  to  the  last  farthing, 
till,  thrust  forth  from  the  house  of  faith  to  walk 
naked  among  thorns,  he  had  surrendered  all  save 
his  great,  deep-rooted,  unflinching  rectitude. 
And,  whether  we  see  it  floating  in  the  pale, 
nervous  despair  of  "  Robert  Elsmere,"  or  staring 
from  out  of  the  sombre  agony  of  Arthur  Clough, 
this  heroic  temper  confronts  us  as  something  our 
age  cannot  match.  One  is  often  asked,  Were  it 
desirable  that  it  should  ?  Is  it  not  an  example 
of  that  religious  panic  which  is  the  fatal  infirmity 
of  contracted  minds,  of  that  terror-stricken 
neurosis  of  the  spirit,  in  whose  red  mist  friends 
appear  as  foes  and  the  battle  is  lost  through 
fright  before  a  blow  has  been  struck  ?  If  we  have 
lost  it,  is  it  not  because  our  minds  are  saner  and 
broader,    because    we    realise    that    truth    can 

2 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

survive  the  roughest  treatment,  and  that  faith  is 
not  at  the  mercy  of  the  critic  or  scientist  ?  To  a 
great  extent  this  is  true,  and  it  is  likewise  true 
that  this  heroic  temper  of  the  past  century  was 
marred  by  self-consciousness  and  morbid  intro- 
spection. Nevertheless,  have  we  not  lost  it  as 
much  because  we  lack  the  solemn  and  instant  sense 
of  final  issues  which  marked  men  who  went  before 
us,  than  because  we  have  superseded  their  narrow 
conceptions  ?  And  is  not  even  the  blind  and 
persecuting  panic  of  the  peasant  who  believes  the 
ark  of  God  to  be  in  danger  a  nobler  thing  than  the 
easy  indifference  of  a  Talleyrand  ?  Again,  it  is 
urged  that  men  like  "  Robert  Elsmere  "  and 
Arthur  H.  Clough  were  exceptional,  even  in 
their  strenuous  age ;  but  have  we  not  many 
still  among  us,  many  who  can  go  back  to  the  time 
when  they  held  converse  with  such  agonists  in 
college  quadrangle  or  city  street  ?  No  century 
surely  has  been  so  solemnly  sanctified  by  a 
multitude  of  sacrificial  souls,  who,  whether  they 
perished  amid  the  flames  or  emerged  with 
transfigured  faces,  were  cast  into  the  fire  for  our 
sakes.  We,  looking  back,  see  them  as  with  cruel 
fillets  tightened  about  their  brows  after  the 
manner  of  ancient  barbarisms  till  the  eyes  start 
and  the  world  is  awry  for  ever  after,  or  paying  so 
desperate  a  share  of  the  common  debt  of  our 
humanity  as  to  be  broken  in  woe.  And  if  the 
sight  stir  nothing  more  in  us  than  pity  for  their 
"  noble   error  "   and   regret   for  their  lack   of  a 

18 


The  Present  Situation :   A  Diagnosis 

sense  of  proportion  and  humour,  or  if  it  bring  a 
covert  sneer  at  their  making  mountains  out  of 
mole-hills,  then  (and  such  a  view  is  not  un- 
characteristic of  our  time),  we  corroborate  the 
gloomiest  verdict  of  the  pessimist  concerning  us. 

It  is  well,  then,  that  we  should  look  deep  and 
long  into  the  mirror  of  the  past  before  we  give 
credence  to  the  cry  that  our  kingdom  of  sweetness 
and  light  is  at  hand.  A  great  deal  is  being  said 
in  the  most  diverse  quarters  concerning  the  revival 
of  the  spiritual  quest  among  us.  "  There  never 
was  a  time,"  so  one  hears  it  said,  "  when  humanity 
was  so  persistently  haunted  by  the  spiritual." 
In  a  sense  this  is  undoubtedly  true,  and  the 
growth  of  pseudo-mystical  cults  is  only  one  of 
many  indications  of  this  fact ;  but  the  resurgence 
of  the  spiritual  is  little  more  than  a  haunting  as 
yet,  vague  and  elusive  as  a  troubling  dream. 
Most  ministers  of  religion  and  other  helpers  of  the 
spiritual  life  will  admit  that  a  faint,  vagrant 
troubling,  an  intangible  vexation  of  spirit,  a 
shifting  ache,  an  irksome  suggestion,  sum  up  the 
spiritual  case  of  the  majority  of  those  who  come  to 
them.  No  modern  version  of  the  old  cry,  "  What 
must  I  do  to  be  saved  ?  "  has  as  yet  become 
vociferous  in  the  heart  of  our  age.  And  though 
the  heart  of  the  age  have  many  cries  the  soul 
remains  inarticulate,  except  under  the  pressure  of 
a  sudden  fall  into  the  abyss  of  sin  or  anguish.  It 
complains,  questions,  hopes,  conjectures,  desires, 
objects,  sighs  and  sorrows  ;   but  rarely  does  a  cry 

19 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

rise  from  its  depths.  "  I  don't  know  what  to 
believe,"  is  the  stereotyped  expression  of  the 
soul's  perplexity ;  but  for  the  most  part  it  is 
put  querulously  rather  than  passionately,  and  thus 
falls  short  of  touching  one's  deepest  sympathies. 
And  the  soul  that  speaks  thus  flutters  on  an  aimless 
wing,  seeks  strange  alliances,  curious  nestlings. 
Sometimes  the  issue  is  blind  surrender  to  super- 
stition, sometimes  shameless  abandon,  sometimes 
grinning  cynicism  ;  how  rarely  either  madness  and 
despair  or  faith  and  character  !  Doubt  abounds, 
but  how  rarely  is  it  rooted  in  a  sincere  passion  of 
soul  !  Religious  aspirations  abound  too,  but  how 
rarely  do  they  spring  from  the  conscience  rather 
than  from  the  aesthetic  sense  !  Spiritual  ecstasy 
grounded  on  sense,  a  shuffling  eclecticism  that 
nibbles  at  this  creed  and  at  that,  a  dissoluteness  of 
habit  which  makes  real  attention  impossible,  com- 
bine to  give  a  trivial  and  impressionist  character 
to  our  modern  religion.  We  have  the  dropsical 
sentiment  of  the  religious  dilettante  existing 
side  by  side  with  the  most  desolating  and  coarse- 
grained rationalism,  and  the  violent  reaction 
against  "  theology  "  as  being  too  "  formal  "  and 
"  external  "  to  interpret  the  deep  cravings  of  the 
spirit  coupled  with  a  superstitious  deference  to 
Sludge  the  medium.  A  less  than  honourable 
reluctance  to  face  central  problems  is  marked  in 
many  "  truth-seekers,"  and  has  its  counterpart  in 
preachers  and  writers  who  minister  to  the  soul's 
moods    and   tenses,    rather   than    to    its    crucial 

20 


The  Present  Situation :   A  Diagnosis 

situation.  Doubtless  the  increasing  number  of 
the  semi-cultured  is  largely  responsible  for  that 
aspect  of  things.  "  The  Religion  of  a  Literary 
Man  "  is  only  "  Happy  Billy,  the  Converted  Pork 
Butcher  "  after  attending  a  course  of  University 
extension  lectures.  In  the  field  of  philosophy  and 
theology  this  staccato  and  impressionist  quality 
is  almost  as  strongly  marked.  The  general 
atmosphere  is  one  of  brilliant  but  fugitive 
perceptions,  vagrant  insights,  fragmentary  and 
suggestive  power.  Of  sustained  and  systematic 
work  there  is  deplorable  paucity.  In  philosophy 
there  is  a  tendency  to  devote  much  time 
and  thought  to  the  interpretation  of  moods,  the 
illumination  of  interesting  side-issues,  and 
specialisation  in  obscure  corners  of  the  field.  In 
theology  systematic  work  is  almost  exclusively 
confined  to  criticism  ;  for  the  rest  we  have  small 
books  on  small  subjects,  and  are  developing  a 
new  casuistry  which  deals  pleasantly  and  adroitly 
with  the  application  of  a  vaguely  defined  Gospel 
to  a  variety  of  minor  situations.  In  popular 
ethics  alone  is  the  situation  different.  There  a 
whole-hearted  revolt,  partly  against  conventional 
ethics  and  partly  against  distinctively  Christian 
ethics,  lends  verve  and  colour  to  the  situation. 
Nietzsche  has  at  last  descended  upon  England, 
at  least  in  such  coarse  refractions  of  his  doctrine 
as  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells — a  writer  who  compels  one's 
respect  on  account  of  his  burning  earnestness — has 
familiarised  us  with.      Here  is  a  clear-cut    issue 

21 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

which  Christian  thought  is  meeting  bravely  by  a 
translation  of  its  own  ethic  from  passive  and 
negative  blamelessness  into  personal  energy,  from 
convention  into  holy  passion,  from  asceticism  into 
self-asseveration  of  life. 

Having  gone  far  enough  with  the  pessimist  we 
would  turn  to  the  prophet  who  sees  light  on  the 
hills.  There  is  much  in  the  temper  of  our  time 
to  turn  that  light  into  darkness  ;  yet  the  truth 
lies  not  with  the  pessimist  but  with  the  seer.  We 
cannot  lift  our  eyes  from  the  valley  to  the  hills 
without  seeing  the  dawn-flush.  We  cannot  turn 
from  the  man  in  the  street  to  the  man  in  the  fore- 
most files  of  thought  without  realising  that  a 
new  world  is  descending  upon  us.  Nothing  is 
more  conducive  to  blindness  than  our  preoccupa- 
tion with  the  man  in  the  street.  The  man  in  the 
street  should  rightly  occupy  our  respectful 
attention ;  to  fling  cheap  sneers  at  him  is  to  proclaim 
oneself  a  petty  provincial  of  thought.  But  this 
much  is  clear  :  that  we  could  help  him  in  far 
truer  comradeship  if  we  did  not  so  persistently 
make  him  the  standard  and  measure  of  all  things. 
We  could  indeed  anticipate,  if  not  prevent,  one 
half  of  his  troubles  by  turning  from  his  innocent 
mind  to  the  minds  in  which  his  troubles  really 
originate  and  to  the  leaders  who  see  the  relieving 
cloud  on  the  far  horizon.  What  say  the  prophets, 
then  ? 

It  has  become  the  merest  commonplace  to  say 
that   the    most    hopeful    feature   of   the    present 

22 


The  Present  Situation :  A  Diagnosis 

situation  is  found  in  the  common  bankruptcy 
of  the  rival  systems  of  Naturalism  and  Intellectual- 
ism  and  their  supersession  by  a  new  vitalistic 
philosophy  ;  and  while  such  a  statement  is  true 
enough,  its  stereotyped  use  frequently  covers  cer- 
tain quite  elementary  but  remarkably  widespread 
and  tenacious  misconceptions.  We  still,  for  in- 
stance, tend  to  slip  back  into  that  characteristically 
nineteenth-century  identification  of  naturalism 
with  the  general  attitude  of  scientists  towards  the 
things  of  the  spirit,  or  with  the  bearing  of  the 
results  of  natural  science  upon  these  things.  We 
forget  that  natural  science  is  to-day  the  most 
cautious,  and  even  diffident,  of  all  movements 
towards  knowledge,  and  need  to  be  occasionally 
reminded  of  the  stern  check  given  to  scientific 
over-confidence  by  such  discoveries  as  that  of 
radium,  or,  still  more  strikingly,  of  that  all- 
pervading  substance  we  call  ether,  out  of 
which  we  may  be  unconsciously  weaving  the 
vesture  of  our  immortality.  "What  do  we  know 
with  the  certainty  of  science,"  asks  Haeckel,  the 
arch-dogmatist,  "  about  the  nature  of  matter, 
force,  gravitation,  ether,  optics,  the  atomic  theory, 
chemistry  ?  "  On  every  hand,  indeed,  the  stark 
cocksureness  of  one  section  of  scientists  is  breaking 
down,  at  the  edges  at  least,  while  the  reverent 
agnosticism  of  another  section  is  tending  more  and 
more  to  be  replaced  by  an  equally  reverent  adven- 
ture upon  the  Unseen.  Naturalism,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  the  philosophy  of  the  man  who  has  sub- 

23 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

scribed  to  the  dogma  of  the  subjectibility  of  all  forms 
of  being  to  the  principles  and  methods  of  science  ; 
who  believes,  in  other  words,  that  natural  science 
is  the  exclusive  measure  of  all  forms  of  truth  or 
possibility.  This  position  presupposes  science 
to  be  an  absolute — something  fixed  and  complete 
in  itself  which  the  mind  can  view  from  the 
outside,  as  it  were,  and  towards  which  it  can 
only  exercise  a  descriptive  function.  Granting 
this,  we  must,  of  course,  accept  the  postulates 
of  science  as  ultimate  expressions  of  truth, 
and  surrender  to  a  blind  mechanical  determinism. 
But  this  is  nothing  else  than  a  relapse  into 
mediaeval  scholasticism — the  petrifaction  of  the 
living  word  into  a  dead  system,  and  modern 
thought  refuses  such  a  naively  "  external " 
view.  We  can  no  longer  regard  science,  even 
in  its  most  ultimate  principles,  as  "  outside  " 
the  human  mind,  but  must  conceive  it  as  an 
activity  of  that  mind  which  can  only  be  under- 
stood in  reference  to  the  thought  that  created 
it  and  wields  it.  To  rescue  science  from  the 
spectral  realm  of  mechanism  and  restore  it  to  its 
own  place  within  that  life  of  the  spirit  which  is 
its  source  is  the  aim  of  a  truly  vitalistic  philosophy. 
It  may  be  urged  that  naturalism  does  not  deny  the 
activity  of  the  mind,  but,  on  the  contrary,  gives 
an  ever-increasing  emphasis  and  care  to  its 
consideration.  But  this  does  not  really  touch  the 
vital  issue,  the  question  being,  not  whether  the 
mind  or  "  spirit  "  is  a  thing  capable  of  acting,  but 

24 


The  Present  Situation :   A  Diagnosis 

whether  it  is  itself  action  and  life,  creating  and 
self-creative.  Naturalism,  while  admitting,  and 
even  emphasising,  mental  activity,  declares  it  to  be 
derivative — a  mere  continuation  of  natural  process 
and,  where  it  does  not  follow  the  laws  of  natural 
process,  a  mere  by-product,  an  ineffective 
accompaniment. 

Again,  it  is  the  fashion  to  pour  a  certain  facile 
and  half-contemptuous  disparagement  upon 
intellect ualism.  This  is  partly  due  to  oblivion  of 
the  fact  that  it  was  intellect  ualism  that  first 
undermined  the  crude  metaphysics  of  materialism 
and  largely  caused  the  mechanical  theory  of  life 
to  fall  into  disrepute,  partly  to  the  circumstance 
that,  unlike  the  naturalistic  philosophy,  intellect- 
ualism  never  more  than  scratched  the  surface  of 
the  pragmatic  British  mind.  The  commonly 
accepted  view  of  intellectualism  is  that  it  stands  for 
a  mercilessly  consistent  and  coldly  impersonal 
philosophy  which  reduces  everything  to  unreality 
except  the  philosopher's  own  excogitations. 
Hegel,  who  is  made  responsible  for  the  widely 
diverse  and  hybrid  developments  conveniently 
classed  together  as  British  Hegelianism,  is  regarded 
as  thought  incarnate,  the  idea  made  flesh,  in  the 
sense  of  holding  a  conception  of  thought  from  which 
will  and  emotion  are  completely  excluded — a 
popular  assumption  which  does  not  gain  in  convinc- 
ing force  through  much  repetition.  According 
to  this  one-eyed  view  intellectualism  stands 
condemned  because  it  falls  into  the  opposite  fallacy 

25 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

to  that  of  naturalism,  exalting  the  mind  to  the  sole 
reality  and  reducing  the  sense-word  to  an  illusion. 
While  this  is  true  in  a  well-defined  sense,  it  obscures 
the  main  issue,  the  more  crucial  fact  being  that 
both  naturalism  and  intellectualism  share  in  the 
same  denial  of  the  free,  creative  activity  of  the 
spirit,  subjecting  it  in  the  one  case  to  the  laws  which 
govern  the  sense-world,  in  the  other  to  the  laws 
of  thought.  In  the  one  case  we  have  mechanical, 
in  the  other  logical,  determinism,  intellectualism 
reducing  freedom  to  the  mere  recognition  of, 
and  acquiescence  in,  logical  necessity.  Just  as 
naturalism  views  science  as  an  absolute,  so 
intellectualism  regards  philosophy  as  existing  by 
and  for  itself  and  developing  through  its  own 
internal  dialectic.  And  while  intellectualism  frees 
us  from  the  tyranny  of  the  immediately  given  and 
the  bondage  of  sense,  it  commits  suicide  at  the 
very  point  of  its  victory  by  surrendering  freedom 
and  personality  as  really,  if  not  as  palpably  and 
explicitly,  as  naturalism.  To  quote  the  terse 
presentation  of  the  case  given  by  Mr.  Hector 
Macpherson  in  his  volume  on  Spencer  : — "  For 
all  practical  purposes  it  signifies  little  whether 
mind  is  the  temporary  embodiment  of  a  spiritual 
principle,  or  a  specialised  form  of  matter.  In 
either  case  man  is  a  bubble  on  the  great  stream  of 
time.  We  may  discourse  of  the  bubble  in  the 
language  of  Hegelianism  or  materialism.  The 
result  is  the  same — absorption  in  the  universal. 
Both  systems  leave  man  a  prisoner  in  the  hands  of 

26 


The  Present  Situation :    A  Diagnosis 

necessity.  The  only  difference  is  that  while 
materialism  puts  round  the  prisoner's  neck  a  plain, 
unpretentious  noose,  Hegelianism  adds  fringes  and 
embroidery.  The  one  passes  sentence  of  death, 
while  the  other  indulges  in  a  poetic  funeral 
oration." 

Turning  to  the  philosophy  of  the  future,  we 
find  that  the  general  mind  is  apt  to  conceive  of 
it  as  a  somewhat  coarse-fibred  pragmatism, 
often  taking  the  shape  of  a  strongly  ethical 
voluntarism.  Pragmatism  is  especially  congenial 
to  the  religious  mind,  and  it  should  be  noted  that, 
even  when  most  deeply  bitten  with  the  meta- 
physical microbe,  theology  has  always  been  kept 
wholesomely  pragmatic  by  its  contact  with  the 
Gospel  of  the  Christ  of  history  and  of  experience. 
To  the  popular  religious  imagination  the  pragma- 
tism of  the  late  lamented  Professor  William  James, 
as  it  has  filtered  through  numberless  elementary 
exponents  of  this  doctrine,  makes  a  very  strong 
appeal.  A  religion  that  "  works  "  is  the  favourite 
desideratum  of  the  man  in  the  street,  the 
"  working "  generally  being  interpreted  in  the 
most  immediate  and  impressionist  sense.  Thus 
it  is  that  the  Salvation  Army  officer,  the  medical 
missionary  and  the  slum  sister  are  the  popular 
types  of  sainthness  and  heroism,  while  the  thinker, 
the  teacher  and  the  contemplative  are  good- 
humouredly  tolerated  as  amiable  and  harmless 
dreamers  on  the  back-streets  of  life.  But  looking 
away  from  the  popularised  pragmatism,  beloved 

27 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

of  a  generation  "  greedy  for  quick  returns  of 
profit,"  and  impatient  of  thought -movements 
which  it  deems  to  be  a  mere  esoteric  amusement  for 
professors  of  philosophy,  we  find  a  tendency  to 
take  pragmatism  with  somewhat  greater  serious- 
ness than  it  warrants,  crediting  it  with  the 
fixity  of  a  system.  Pragmatism,  however, 
is  still  rather  a  criticism  of  absolute  notions  in 
philosophy,  and  a  gallant  attempt  to  extricate 
it  from  the  impasse  of  agnosticism,  than  a 
system.  Its  force  must  be  sought  in  its  trenchant 
critique  of  thinkers  who  hold  not  only  that  there 
is  an  Absolute,  but  that  we  can  arrive  at  a  clear 
understanding  of  its  nature,  and  in  its  brave  and 
salutary  attack  upon  the  delusion  that  mankind 
can  afford  to  wait  and  suspend  judgment  and  action 
while  the  philosophers  make  up  their  minds  at 
their  leisure.  But  a  philosophy  which  sees  the 
world  as  "  tangled,  muddy,  painful  and  per- 
plexed "  and  its  great  processes  as  "  vast  driftings" 
or  "  cosmic  weather,"  yet  bids  men  believe  in  a 
God  and  a  goodness  for  which  it  can  find  no 
objective  basis  because  it  is  good  and  profitable 
and  "  helpful  "  so  to  believe,  is  not  a  thing  that 
"  works  "  for  any  but  anarchist  and  bankrupt 
minds.  It  is  a  counsel  of  despair,  not  a  rallying 
cry  for  a  new  and  hopeful  age.  Yet  many  conceive 
of  the  philosophy  of  the  future  as  a  development  of 
pragmatism,  and,  strangely  enough,  claim  Eucken 
as  a  representative  of  this  tendency.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  very  aspect  of  Eucken 's  philosophy 

28 


The  Present  Situation :   A  Diagnosis 

which  invites  a  comparison  with  pragmatism — 
i.e.,  his  activism — is  sharply  opposed  to  it  ;  and 
jaded  souls,  content,  after  wild  flutterings  among 
imperfectly  assimilated  systems,  to  decline  upon 
a  meretricious  philosophy  which  makes  religion  a 
servile  ministrant  to  human  conditions  and 
needs,  can  do  no  better  than  go  to  Eucken  for  the 
astringent  their  relaxed  fibre  indicates. 

Voluntarism,  again,  is  an  aspect  of  pragmatism 
peculiarly  attractive  to  the  religious  mind 
anxious  to  defend  and  commend  the  faith.  In  the 
great  ethicising  movement  in  philosophy  which 
asserts  the  primacy  of  the  moral  and  the  hegemony 
of  the  will  among  the  faculties,  these  apologists 
see  the  link  which  will  in  the  future  bind  philosophy 
and  theology  together,  and  they  frequently  under- 
stand it  as  a  voluntarism  less  metaphysical  than 
the  romantic  voluntarism  of  Schopenhauer,  and 
slightly  less  epistemological  than  the  English 
type,  but  rather  as  predominately  ethical  as  that 
of  Paulsen  and  Sigwart.  It  must  be  remembered, 
however,  that  while  this  ethicising  movement, 
whose  roots  go  back  to  the  anti-Hegelian  reaction 
which  shook  the  mind  of  Germany  in  the  years 
between  1840  and  1880,  is  entirely  valid  in  its 
insistence  upon  the  critical  momentum  of  the 
volitional  side  of  experience,  any  attempt  to  make 
the  will  supreme  not  only  lands  us  in  intellectual 
anarchy,  but  makes  religion  impossible  except  by 
way  of  a  moral  positivism  which  leaves  mankind 
free  to  worship — itself.     Again  Eucken  is  claimed 

29 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

as  a  voluntarist  by  many,  but  his  repudiation  of 
voluntarism  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired  in 
clearness  and  emphasis. 

What,  then,  are  those  rays  of  light  on  the  far 
hills  that  point  to  a  new  and  redemptive  day 
in  the  history  of  thought  ?  First  and  most 
generally,  a  profound  dissatisfaction  with  modern 
civilisation  and  culture  as  they  affect  man's 
spiritual  life.  We  have  passed  through  a  salutary 
reaction  from  the  hollow  and  specious  Man- 
chester theory,  with  its  cackle  of  "  happiness 
for  the  greatest  number  "  and  its  bitter  fruits  of 
squalor,  degradation  and  degeneracy;  and  the 
generous  sentiment  which  has  sent  so  many  of 
the  best  minds  and  bravest  hearts  into  the  slum 
and  the  sweater's  den  is  now  being  translated 
from  terms  of  personal  humanism  and  altruism 
into  terms  of  the  largest  and  most  realistic  public 
ethic.  Hitherto  the  social  conscience  has  agreed 
with  popular  pragmatism  in  glorifying  the  thing 
that  "  works  "  most  quickly  and  apparently  in 
raising  the  submerged  and  ameliorating  their 
conditions  of  life.  We  are  just  emerging — barely 
emerging — from  a  temper  to  which  the  man  who 
cries  for  bread  makes  a  more  real  and  poignant 
appeal  than  the  soul  that  crieth  out  for  the  living 
God,  and  which  accounts  the  man  who  evolves  a 
"  darkest  England  "  scheme  a  greater  hero  than 
the  man  who  "  merely "  thinks  and  prays. 
To  our  passionate  arraignment  of  modern  civilisa- 
tion and  culture  on  the  count  of  its  callousness 

30 


The  Present  Situation :  A  Diagnosis 

and  brutality  to  the  toiling  and  unprivileged 
masses  we  are  adding  the  deeper  indictment  of 
injustice  and  damage  to  the  spiritual  life  of  man, 
taking  that  term  in  its  broadest  signification. 
Slowly  we  are  learning  to  believe  the  hackneyed 
truth  that  the  central  guilt  and  sting  of  all  cruelty 
to  body  and  estate  is  spiritual,  and  that  a  Herod's 
massacre  of  innocents  is  not  so  black  a  crime  as 
the  extinction  in  a  single  human  soul  of  those 
"  noble  thoughts  that  pass  across  the  heart  of 
every  man  like  great  white  birds."  Tardily  we 
are  coming  to  see  the  essential  triviality,  vulgarity 
and  heartlessness  of  unredeemed  refinement  and 
culture,  the  coarse  selfishness  and  veiled  sensuality 
at  the  core  of  romantic  aestheticism,  the  stultifying 
influence  of  a  pedestrian  and  conventional 
morality  and  its  menace  to  true  ethics,  and  the 
spiritual  stupefaction  and  demoralisation  conse- 
quent upon  a  civilisation  which  patronises 
Christianity. 

And  it  is  not  from  pulpits  and  theological 
colleges  that  this  new  appreciation  of  the 
Christian  point  of  view  comes,  but  from  the 
philosophers  and  scientists,  the  essayists  and 
novelists.  Men  everywhere  are  feeling  the 
hollowness,  the  contradiction,  the  spiritual 
bankruptcy  of  our  sleek  and  well-to-do  culture. 
Now  it  is  Nietzsche  whose  sensitive  impressionist 
soul,  restlessly  reconnoitring  and  nervously 
fumbling  after  the  inward  life,  recoils  sharply  from 
a  blatant  and  self-conscious  culture  that   wears 

3i 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

down  the  fine  edge  of  the  individual  and  buries 
worth  beneath  a  melee  of  fictitious  and  vicious 
values.  And  though  incurable  neurosis  gave  a 
crude  and  rasping  touch  to  his  revolt,  and  his 
subjective  emotionalism  failed  in  achieving  its 
own  end  of  inward  sufficiency,  yet  that  revolt  was 
noble  in  itself,  and  much  blame  rests  with  those 
followers  who  perversely  underscored  its  most 
vicious  aspects.  Now  it  is  the  sad  voice  of 
Frederic  Myers  making  complaint  of  the  inward 
dispeace  of  our  time  and  the  pitiful  smallness  of 
spiritual  satisfaction  in  proportion  to  spiritual 
need.  In  sharp  contrast  comes  the  crisp  matter- 
of-fact  voice  of  that  filein  air  personality,  Dr. 
Widney,  reminding  us  that  primitive  man  never 
shuddered  in  such  bewilderment  and  helplessness 
of  soul  before  the  unknown  forces  of  nature  as 
cultured  man  shudders  to-day — though  his  fear 
be  wrapped  up  in  nonchalance  or  rationalism — 
before  the  self-made  monster  of  a  civilisation 
which  he  only  half  comprehends,  and  which  must 
enslave  and  crush  him,  unless  indeed  he  can  find 
it  in  his  heart  to  conquer  through  faith  in  the 
"  All-Father."  Maeterlinck  recalls  us  in  silver 
tones  from  the  inutile  noises  we  call  life  to  listen 
to  eternity  murmuring  on  the  horizon,  to  heed  the 
silence,  the  quivering  voice  of  light,  the  unseen 
goodness,  the  deeper  life,  the  passing  thought,  the 
inner  beauty  ;  to  turn  from  the  jangling  of  the 
schools  to  those  reservoirs  of  certitude  whither 
the   pale   herd  of  souls  flock  every  morning  to 

32 


The  Present  Situation  :   A  Diagnosis 

slake  their  thirst.  And  at  the  opposite  edge 
Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  sums  up  the  situation  in  his 
chuckling  description  of  a  man  going  to  a  political 
meeting  and  making  a  speech,  warmly  protesting 
against  the  natives  of  the  Congo  being  treated  as 
beasts,  and  then  putting  his  silk  hat  on  his  head, 
and  his  umbrella  under  his  arm,  and  walking 
hurriedly  down  the  street  to  a  meeting  of  scientists 
where  he  delivers  an  elaborate  lecture  to  prove  that 
they  are  beasts.  But  of  all  the  voices  that  are 
being  raised  against  the  incoherency  and  unreality 
of  our  civilisation  none  falls  with  greater  gravity 
and  stringency  than  that  of  Professor  Rudolf 
Eucken,  who  sees  behind  the  outer  ostentation  of 
our  culture  an  emptiness  that  is  worse  than  pain. 
In  a  long  and  characteristic  passage  he  thus 
delivers  his  soul  : — "  It  is  not  only  at  particular 
points  that  civilisation  does  not  correspond  to 
the  demands  of  spiritual  life,  but  that  civilisation, 
as  a  whole,  is  in  many  ways  in  conflict  with  those 
demands.  We  feel,  with  increasing  distress,  the 
wide  interval  between  the  varied  and  important 
work  to  be  done  at  the  circumference  of  life  and 
the  complete  emptiness  at  the  centre.  When  we 
take  an  inside  view  of  life  we  find  that  a  life  of 
mere  bustling  routine  preponderates,  that  men 
struggle  and  boast  and  strive  to  outdo  one  another, 
that  unlimited  ambition  and  vanity  are  character- 
istic of  individuals,  that  they  are  always  running 
to  and  fro,  and  pressing  forward,  or  feverishly 
exercising  all  their  powers.     But  throughout  it  all 

33 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

we  come  upon  nothing  that  gives  any  real  value  to 
life  and  nothing  spiritually  elevating.  Hence  we 
do  not  find  any  meaning  and  value  in  life,  but  in 
the  end  a  single  huge  show  in  which  culture  is 
reduced  to  a  burlesque.  Anyone  who  thinks  it 
all  over  and  reflects  upon  the  difference  between 
the  enormous  labour  that  has  been  expended  and 
the  accompanying  gain  to  the  essentials  of  life 
must  either  be  driven  to  complete  negation  and 
despair,  or  must  seek  new  ways  of  guaranteeing  a 
value  to  life  and  liberating  men  from  the  sway  of 
the  pettily  human.  But  this  will  force  men  to 
resume  the  quest  for  inner  connections." 

Another  significant  element  of  modern  thought 
is  found  in  the  ever-growing  recognition  of  the 
truth-value  of  religion.  From  William  James,  to 
whose  philosophical  rectitude  the  rapture  of  the 
God-intoxicated  soul  was  so  sore  a  temptation,  and 
who  snatched  religious  experience  from  its  mean 
position  in  the  psychology  of  the  schools  and  the 
laboratory  and  gave  the  impetus  to  an  autonomous 
psychology  of  religion,  to  Rudolf  Eucken,  who 
makes  religion  practically  co-extensive  with  the 
whole  spiritual  life  of  man,  the  philosophical 
interest  in  religion  has  moved  from  the  realm  of 
mere  patronage,  or  even  sympathetic  appreciation, 
to  a  reverent  and  solemn  recognition  of  its  unique- 
ness and  autonomy.  Henri  Bergson,  again,  while 
he  has  not  yet  given  us  the  promised  treatise  on 
religion  which  is  to  crown  his  philosophy,  holds 
and  stirs  the  wider  public,  not  so  much  by  the 

34 


The  Present  Situation :    A  Diagnosis 

vivid  actuality  and  brilliant  lucidity  of  his  thought, 
as  by  that  insistence  upon  the  primacy  of  the  soul 
which  rings  through  and  under  his  critique  of 
intuition  like  a  sunken  bell.  It  is  significant  that 
in  France  James's  "Varieties  of  Religious  Experi- 
ence," with  its  suggestion  of  a  new  Christian 
Apologetic  based  upon  vital  contact  with  the 
Unseen,  together  with  Bergson's  doctrine  of 
intuition  as  the  great  highway  to  Truth,  has  given 
an  unprecedented  impulse  to  neo-Catholicism, 
not  only  inspiring  a  fresh  study  of  the  great  mystics, 
but  awakening  an  interest  in  metaphysical 
thought.  In  Protestant  countries,  notably  in 
Germany  and  in  England,  it  is  Eucken's  valuation 
of  religion,  and  specifically  of  Christianity  as  the 
"  characteristic  "  and  absolute  religion,  that  is 
most  potently  fructifying  thought  both  within  and 
without  the  Churches.  While  exercising  a  radical 
and  not  always  quite  convincing  critique  upon  the 
existing  form  of  Christianity,  Eucken  has  shown 
that  even  such  defective  and  purblind  appropria- 
tion as  mankind  has  been  able  to  make  of  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  has  raised  the  life  of  the  spirit  to 
an  unprecedented  power  and  freedom,  and  enriched 
the  world's  thought  with  elements  of  unique  and 
abiding  preciousness.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  since  Descartes  there  has  never  been  a  period 
in  which  the  foremost  elements  in  philosophic 
thought  have  fused  so  intimately  not  only  with 
the  religious  aspirations  of  the  universal  soul,  but 
also  with  the  theological  and  experimental  interest 

35 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

in  redemption.  For  the  first  time  since  the  great 
metaphysical  period  of  ecclesiastical  dogma 
philosophy  is  tending  once  more  to  become  a 
doctrine  of  redemption,  and  the  old  cry,  "  What 
must  I  do  to  be  saved  ?  "  is  whispering  itself  once 
more  to  the  restless  heart  of  a  too  early  wearied 
age,  and  to  the  churning  mind  of  an  experimental 
and  adventurous  generation  of  thinkers.  And  while 
the  long  and  sharp  contention  between  philosophy 
and  religion  is  not  ended  yet,  the  battle  is  now  at 
close  range  and  on  common  ground. 

But  perhaps  the  most  salient  feature  in  the 
present  thought-scape  is  the  growing  conviction 
that  the  pathway  to  reality  is  not  by  the  mere 
intellect.  Broadly  speaking,  only  two  eddies, 
interlocked  and  yeasting,  ruffle  the  pools  of  thought 
to-day — the  problem  of  knowledge,  How  can  one 
thing  know  another  ?  and  the  problem  of  freedom, 
How  can  the  free  initiative  and  purpose  of  man 
be  reconciled  with  the  element  of  necessity  in 
things  on  which  the  possibility  of  knowledge  seems 
to  depend  ?  Naturalism  wiped  out  one  ripple 
with  a  clean  dead  sweep,  and,  boldly  surrendering 
to  necessity,  achieved  at  least  the  succes  d'estime 
which  belongs  to  the  dully  and  bluntly  consistent. 
Intellectualism,  in  its  gallant  effort  to  liberate 
the  human  spirit  from  the  iron  bars  of  deter- 
minism by  a  show  of  "  logical  freedom,"  delivered 
it  from  imprisonment  into  despotism.  It  left  us 
with  a  loss  of  moral  dignity  and  spiritual  initiative 
which  is  the  inevitable  consequence  of  a  consistent 

36 


The  Present  Situation :  A  Diagnosis 

acceptance  of  any  system  that  conceives  of  the 
world's  movement  as  a  process,  be  that  process 
mechanical  or  intellectual.  In  the  reaction  which 
followed  upon  the  Hegelian  vogue,  men's  thoughts 
shifted  from  the  conception  of  mere  truth  and 
concentrated  more  and  more  upon  life  which  is 
neither  a  closed  logical  system  nor  a  mechanism, 
neither  a  shadow  nor  a  thing,  but  an  energy,  a 
will.  And  if  our  philosophy  is  to  be  a  philosophy 
of  life  as  will,  power,  spirit,  then  the  right  solution 
of  the  problem  of  knowledge  must  be  involved  in 
the  practical  solution  of  the  problem  of  freedom  ; 
in  other  words,  we  have  to  recognise  the  primacy 
of  the  moral  in  knowledge.  Modern  philosophical 
work  is  borne  by  the  conviction  that  truth  lies  in 
the  realm  of  freedom,  and  to  go  questing  in  that 
realm  the  adventurer  needs  something  more  than 
the  staff  of  logic  ;  he  needs  the  wings  of  an  energy 
free  and  spontaneous  as  the  truth  he  seeks — a 
moral  and  passionate  self-asseveration  of  life  ; 
not  so  much  the  will  to  believe  as  the  kind  of  will 
that  can  believe  the  truth  ;  and  not  merely  the 
mind  to  see  visions,  but  the  energy  to  create  values. 
Thus  Dr.  F.  C.  S.  Schiller,  who  is  by  no  means 
merely  the  riotous  philosophical  swashbuckler  that 
immature  criticism  would  make  him,  tells  us 
that  our  system  of  ethical  values  determines  the 
premises  of  our  reasoning  :  we  must  be  good  in 
order  to  know  the  truth.  Eucken,  while  safe- 
guarding himself  against  the  imputation  of 
voluntarism  which,  he  submits,  can  do  no  more 

37 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

than  replace  one  form  of  onesideness  by  another, 
and  while  claiming  for  religion  the  security  of  a 
speculative  basis,  yet  insists  that  it  is  man's 
attitude  to  life  which  matters  most  for  his  know- 
ledge of  the  truth.  Bergson,  whose  critique  of 
intuition  is  perhaps  the  most  forceful  tributary 
to  the  tide  of  this  ethicising  movement,  challenges 
the  intellect's  theoretic  authority  in  principle, 
denies  that  logic  can  tell  us  what  is  possible  or 
impossible  in  the  world  of  being  or  fact,  reduces 
the  mind  to  the  means  by  which  we  find  our  way 
about  in  the  material  universe,  says  it  was  devised 
in  the  development  of  man  for  the  purpose  of 
knowing  and  handling  matter,  and  is  therefore 
something  of  a  constitutional  materialist.  It  may, 
however,  have  slumbering  at  its  heart  undeveloped 
potencies  and  capacities,  and  by  being  united  to  the 
will  and  plunged  into  the  ocean  of  experience,  it  may 
obtain  sure  knowledge  of  what  is  of  priceless 
value  for  man's  spiritual  life.  In  other  words,  we 
are  dependent  for  our  true  knowledge  of  reality 
upon  the  intuition  arising  from  the  unity  of  will 
and  intelligence,  and  through  intuition  intellect  will 
be  regenerated  and  come  into  its  true  kingdom. 

How  these  three  main  elements  of  modern 
thought  are  seen  to  shape  themselves  in  the 
philosophies  of  Rudolf  Eucken  and  Henri  Bergson, 
and  how,  through  the  influence  of  these  great 
thinkers,  they  must  affect  Christian  thought  and 
contribute  to  the  theology  of  the  future  will  be 
considered  in  the  course  of  the  following  chapters. 

38 


II 

Rudolf  Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 


CHAPTER  II 

Rudolf  Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

Eucken's  life  and  work — His  chief  writings  characterised 
— His  philosophical  antecedents — The  Protagonist  of  a 
new  Idealism — His  critique  of  Naturalism  and  Intellectual- 
ism,  and  his  defence  of  the  Free  Personality — From 
Individualism  to  Personality  :  the  Negative  Movement — His 
Philosophy  as  a  Cosmic-personal  and  Religious  Idealism — 
His  Activism — His  Philosophy  of  History  :  the  living  past 
— The  Socialised  Personality  and  the  cult  of  the  Superman 
— A  Christianity  for  "  enjoying  "  souls — His  Irrationalism 
and  neglect  of  Psychology — His  significance  for  the  present 
situation  in  British  thought. 


CHAPTER    II 

Rudolf  Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

It  is  now  some  three  years  since  Professor  Eucken 
has  broken  upon  the  slowly-shifting  horizon  of 
British  thought,  somewhat  grudgingly  saluted  by 
the  schoolmen,  but  evoking  so  swift  and  complete 
a  homage  from  a  wider  and — dare  one  say  ? — a 
less  trammelled  and  more  discerning  public,  that 
it  seems  hard  to  believe  that  he  has  so  many  years 
of  pathbreaking  and  fruitful  work  behind  him. 
Emerging  into  prominence  when  German  philo- 
sophical thought  was  deep  in  the  trough  of  the 
anti-Hegelian  reaction,  when  naturalism  was 
beginning  to  fray  and  crumble  at  the  edges,  and 
churning  minds,  beggared  of  a  satisfactory 
explanation  of  life,  were  seeking  desperate 
alliances  with  the  pessimism  of  Schopenhauer,  the 
positivism  of  Comte,  and  the  subjective  emotional- 
ism of  Nietzsche,  Eucken  met  the  situation  with 
his  philosophy  of  the  life  of  the  spirit.  Naturalism 
had  bred  on  the  one  hand  an  incredible  coarseness 
of  mental  fibre  and  psychic  sensibility,  on  the 
other  hand  an  almost  hysterical  scepticism. 
Intellectualism  in  its  decadence  had  produced  a 
crop   of   dialectical    petits-maitres   who,    with    an 

4i 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

amazing  moral  astigmatism,  viewed  the  problem  of 
the  universe  as  an  exceedingly  interesting  puzzle 
to  be  solved  by  the  key-word  of  a  logical  category, 
and,  under  semblance  of  disinterested  devotion 
to  speculative  thought,  debased  philosophy  into 
"  a  professional  game  "  out  of  all  relation  to  life. 
Against  these  nerveless  and  flat  phases  of  thought 
Eucken's  experimental  and  vitalistic  temper 
strikes  sharp  upon  one's  consciousness.  Looking 
over  the  philosophical  entanglement  and  fatigue 
of  his  age,  he  saw  in  the  impact  of  rival  systems 
not  a  conflict  of  theories,  but  a  meeting  of  hostile 
world-powers — organisations  of  life  (Lebens- 
systeme)  rooted  in  definite  historical  movements 
rather  than  mere  systematisations  of  theory 
(Lehrsysteme).  This  change  of  terminology  is 
significant  of  the  very  core  of  his  vitalistic  view 
of  the  world. 

Born  in  1846  at  Aurich,  East  Frisia,  Eucken 
owed  his  earliest  and  most  lasting  religious 
impressions  to  one  of  his  school  teachers,  Wilhelm 
Reuter,  himself  a  pupil  of  that  remarkable  and 
unjustly  all  but  forgotten  philosopher,  K.  Ch.  F. 
Krause,  whose  vitalistic  philosophy  makes  him  a 
true  precursor  of  Eucken.  It  was  not  Reuter's 
philosophical  training,  however — a  training 
received  not  only  from  Krause,  but  from  Hegel 
himself — which  set  so  deep  a  mark  on  Eucken 
thus  early.  It  was  rather  his  deep  experimental 
interest  in  religious  problems  and  his  linking  up 
of  these  problems   with  philosophy  that   caused 

42 


Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

this  strictly  orthodox  Lutheran  teacher  to  exercise 
so  potent  and  permanent  an  influence  upon  the 
boy  who  was  later  to  break  away  from  all  dog- 
matic tradition.  As  a  university  student,  first  at 
Gottingen  and  then  at  Berlin,  Eucken  was  more 
influenced  by  the  books  he  read  than  by  the  men 
he  heard.  Lotze  failed  to  attract  him,  possibly 
because  of  the  frigidity  of  his  mind.  Teichmuller, 
on  the  other  hand,  introduced  him  to  the  study  of 
Aristotle ;  and  Trendelenburg,  while  failing  to  secure 
his  adherence  to  his  system  as  a  whole,  impressed 
him  deeply  by  the  ethical  character  of  his 
thought,  and  by  his  endeavour  to  relate  philosophy 
and  history.  After  leaving  the  University  and 
spending  some  years  in  teaching,  Eucken  accepted 
a  call  to  Bale,  Switzerland,  as  professor  of 
philosophy  in  187 1,  where  he  published  one  of  the 
most  important  of  his  Aristotelian  studies.  In 
1874  he  was  called  to  Jena,  Germany,  where  he 
remains  to  this  day. 

Tn  addition  to  the  characteristic  and  indefinable 
glamour  that  hangs  about  a  small  university 
town  for  all  who  carry  the  student  heart  amid  the 
dull  routine  of  life,  Jena  is  dowered  with  a  past 
in  which  the  most  illustrious  names  of  romance, 
literature  and  philosophy  are  interwoven.  With 
Weimar  it  shares  the  glory  of  having  harboured 
Schiller  and  Goethe.  There  the  Romantic 
movement  made  a  home  for  itself  in  the  brothers 
Schlegel,  and  there  also  taught  the  philosophers 
who  were  most  closely  related  to  that  movement, 

43 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

Schelling  and  Fichte,  the  latter  of  whom  had  to 
meet  a  bigoted  charge  of  atheism,  and  shook  the 
dust  of  Jena  off  his  feet  to  continue  his  lustrous 
path  in  Berlin.  But  the  pride  of  Jena  centres 
round  Hegel,  whose  Napoleonic  sympathies, 
however,  secured  his  expulsion.  Coming  down 
to  recent  times,  the  roll-call  of  Jena  includes  such 
names  as  Kuno  Fischer,  Karl  Hase,  and  Richard 
Lipsius,  and  at  the  present  day  two  names  divide 
the  international  honours — Haeckel  and  Eucken, 
antipodeans  in  conviction,  method  and  tempera- 
ment. 

Eucken  enjoys  to-day  a  truly  cosmopolitan 
reputation,  and  perhaps  no  other  German  professor 
of  philosophy  can  boast  of  such  a  world-wide 
discipleship.  Students  from  all  quarters  of  the 
earth,  including  such  remote  regions  as  Iceland, 
flock  to  sit  at  the  feet  of  a  man  whose  idealism 
not  only  serves  as  a  philosophical  rallying- 
ground  for  all  who  are  engaged  in  the  struggle  for 
a  concrete  spiritual  experience,  but  finds  expression 
in  a  singularly  attractive  and  benignant  person- 
ality whose  influence  reinforces  its  teaching  in 
a  characteristic  and  indelible  way.  Among  his 
past  students  he  numbers  many  prominent  men 
in  all  departments  of  life,  and  a  very  large 
proportion  of  ministers  of  religion,  including  a 
member  of  the  Greek  Patriarchate,  and  not  a 
few  in  the  Roman  Church.  His  relations  with  his 
British  students  have  always  been  of  the  happiest, 
and  he  is  conscious  of  a  very  deep  affinity  with  the 

44 


Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

Anglo-Saxon  race.  At  present  his  influence  is 
spreading  to  Japan,  where  some  of  his  most 
important  writings,  translated  into  Japanese,  are 
moving  the  noblest  minds  in  the  direction  of  a 
new  spiritual  ideal ;  and  an  ever-increasing  number 
of  students  from  this  remarkable  country  are 
making  the  pilgrimage  to  Jena.  The  award  of 
the  Nobel  Prize  to  Eucken  in  1908  gave  a  powerful 
impetus  to  the  translation  of  his  books,  and  it  is 
from  this  event  that  his  English  vogue  dates. 

Eucken's  work  falls  naturally  into  two  periods — 
the  historical  and  critical,  and  the  constructive, 
divided  by  a  transition  period.  To  the  first 
belong  his  early  Aristotelian  studies,  his  "  History 
of  Philosophical  Terminology,"  and  his  "  Funda- 
mental Concepts  of  the  Present  Day  "  in  its  first 
form.  In  this  latter  volume  the  crystallisation  of 
long  processes  of  thought  into  concepts  finds  a 
most  penetrative  and  luminous  analytical  treat- 
ment, and  this  book  is  his  characteristic  prole- 
gomenon to  his  own  philosophy.  The  transition 
period  is  marked  by  the  third  edition  of  this  book, 
under  a  new  title,  "  Spiritual  Movements 
(Stromungen)  of  the  Present  Day,"  marking 
Eucken's  characteristic  reaction  against  intellect- 
ualism.  In  this  edition  the  critical  discussion  is 
explicitly  inspired  by  and  made  ministrant  to  the 
fundamental  convictions  of  the  new  Idealism 
which  afterwards  came  to  be  associated  with  his 
name.  A  more  popular  and  attractive,  but  not,  to 
my  mind,  more  important  link  between  the  two 

45 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

periods  is  found  in  "  The  Problem  of  Human 
Life,  as  Viewed  by  the  Great  Thinkers  from  Plato 
to  the  Present  Time  " — perhaps  the  "  classical  " 
work  of  Eucken,  combining  a  wealth  of  sheer 
learning  with  a  clarity  of  exposition,  a  charm  of 
presentation,  and  an  appreciative  independence  of 
judgment.  The  constructive  period  includes 
"  The  Unity  of  the  Spiritual  Life,"  comprising 
also  a  volume  of  prolegomena,  "  The  Struggle  for 
a  Concrete  Spiritual  Experience,"  "  The  Meaning 
and  Value  of  Life,"  and  "  Life's  Basis  and  Life's 
Ideal  :  Fundamentals  of  a  New  Philosophy  of 
Life "  ;  also  the  following,  dealing  more 
specifically  with  the  problem  of  religion  :  "  The 
Truth  of  Religion,"  "  The  Essence  of  Religion," 
"  The  Main  Problems  of  the  Philosophy  of 
Religion  at  the  Present  Time,"  and  his  latest, 
"  Can  we  still  be  Christians  ?  "  "  The  Struggle 
for  a  Concrete  Spiritual  Experience  "  is  perhaps 
the  most  revealingly  characteristic  of  Eucken 's 
philosophical  individuality,  while  "  Life's  Basis  and 
Life's  Ideal  "  is  not  only  the  most  elaborate  and 
exhaustive,  and,  therefore,  the  most  important 
for  a  thorough  grasp  of  his  system,  but  its  luminous 
discussion  of  the  ideas  of  Truth  and  Reality  makes  it 
also  of  peculiar  value  to  the  reader  with  theological 
interests.  "  The  Unity  of  the  Spiritual  Life  "  is 
fundamental  for  the  study  of  Eucken,  and  "  The 
Meaning  and  Value  of  Life  "  represents  a  most 
successful  effort  to  awaken  in  the  educated  mind 
a  vital  and  experimental  interest  in  the  great 

46 


Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

life-problems.  Among  the  books  dealing  specifically 
with  the  philosophy  of  religion,  his  monumental 
work,  "  The  Truth  of  Religion,"  gives  the  surest 
insight  into  Eucken's  characteristic  handling  and 
interpretation  of  the  problem,  and  contains  his 
religious  philosophy  in  its  most  fully  developed 
form.  For  my  own  part  I  would  emphasise  the 
brief  and  popular  "  Main  Problems  "  for  its 
peculiar  fertility  of  suggestiveness.  His  latest 
book,  "  Can  we  still  be  Christians  ?  "  is  especially 
interesting  as  not  only  throwing  a  flood  of  light 
upon  Eucken's  own  dogmatic,  or  rather  un dogmatic 
position,  but  as  illustrating  the  religious  situation 
in  Germany  to-day,  and  doing  so  all  the  more 
clearly — one  had  almost  said  luridly — because  by 
way  of  unconscious  side-lights. 

Students  may  find  the  first  approach  to  Eucken 
a  little  less  than  smooth  on  account  of  his  com- 
paratively severe  and  bare  style.  In  sharp 
contrast  to  Bergson,  whose  illustrative  genius  is 
at  once  a  charm  and  a  snare,  there  are  next  to  no 
poppies  among  the  corn  of  Eucken's  exposition. 
Moreover,  he  has  neither  the  chromaticism  of 
temperament,  nor  the  sonority,  colour  and  rhythm 
of  verbal  music  that  make  Schopenhauer  and 
Nietzsche  such  a  beguilement  to  read.  Nor  has 
he  any  of  that  esprit  and  that  almost  journalistic 
lightness  and  impressionism  of  touch  which  the 
modern  epicure  of  mind  expects  even  from  the 
gravest  teacher,  nor  again  that  Socratic  irony  and 
homeliness  which  find  their  modern  exemplar  in 

47 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

Soren  Kierkegaard.  Nevertheless,  his  style  will 
on  closer  acquaintance  be  found  to  be  a  clear  and 
worthy  vehicle  of  his  thought,  rising  at  times  to  a 
grave  and  sober  eloquence,  at  times  to  a  high  and 
noble  persuasiveness,  at  others  to  an  impelling 
and  searching  appeal.  Once  the  initial  impression 
of  stark  inflexibility  is  overcome,  it  will  appear  a 
fitting  garment  to  every  shade  of  his  thought  and 
many  threads  of  beauty  will  be  discovered  in  its 
web. 

With  regard  to  Eucken's  position  in  the  history 
of  philosophy  and  his  philosophical  antecedents,  he 
himself  mentions  Plato,  Aristotle,  Augustine, 
Plotinus,  Kant  and  Hegel,  as  having  influenced 
him  most  profoundly,  and  to  this  list  we  must  of 
course  add  Fichte,  with  whom  he  has  many  deep 
affinities.  His  discussion  of  Augustine  is  marked 
not  only  by  the  highest  degree  of  philosophical 
acumen,  but  by  undisguised  admiration  for  a 
personality  from  whom,  he  declares,  all  times  and 
all  minds  may  gain  strength  and  inspiration  in 
their  struggle  with  the  great  permanent  problems 
of  human  life.  Perhaps  the  influence  of  Augustine 
upon  his  thinking  may  be  described  as  pre- 
ponderatingly  negative,  operating  by  way  of 
re-action.  Thus  one  can  trace  a  sympathetic 
but  sharply  critical  study  of  the  Augustinian 
doctrine  of  Grace  and  Predestination  in  Eucken's 
vindication  of  freedom  and  in  his  conception  of 
spiritual  activity  as  an  interpenetration  of  the 
human  and  the  Divine.     The  influence  of  Plato, 

48 


Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

Aristotle,  and  Plotinus  need  not  be  traced  in 
detail  here.  I  have  singled  out  Augustine  to 
illustrate  Eucken's  characteristic  hospitality  to 
problems  generally  relegated  to  theology ;  while 
an  intellectualistic  system  may  bar  out  theology, 
the  barrier  breaks  down  when  we  pass  to  a  philo- 
sophy of  life.  Comin  to  his  more  immediate 
philosophical  antecedents,  we  find  him,  in  common 
with  all  modern  thinkers,  accepting  Kant's 
fundamental  principle,  but  sharply  questioning 
the  Kantian  doctrine  of  the  phenomenal  character 
of  inward  experience,  and,  in  consequence,  of 
time.  With  Hegel  he  has  many  superficial 
affinities,  and  his  adoption  of  the  familiar  three- 
stage  scheme,  and  the  emphasis  he  lays  on  the 
negative  movement,  make  them  appear  far  deeper 
than  they  really  are.  In  reality  he  stands  in 
sheer  opposition  to  Hegel  on  at  least  three 
fundamental  points,  differing  from  him  in  philo- 
sophical method,  in  his  activistic  conception  of 
the  life  of  the  spirit,  and  in  his  valuation  of 
history.  With  Fichte  his  affinities  are  deeper. 
In  his  anti-individualism,  anti-intellectualism,  and 
theological  convictions,  they  go  deep  indeed  ;  but 
here  again  there  is  a  sharp  line  of  separation, 
especially  in  their  respective  attitudes  towards 
experience  and  in  their  view  of  religion.  While 
Eucken's  philosophy  may  be  described  as  a 
vitalistic  rehandling  of  classic  concepts,  as  a 
matter  of  emphasis  as  much  as  of  discovery,  as 
"  a  new  culture,  rather  than  a  new  category  " 

49 

i 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

(Boyce  Gibson),  yet  at  every  point  of  its  develop- 
ment his  originality  asserts  itself  even  as  against 
the  greatest  of  his  antecedents,  and  as  the  prot- 
agonist of  a  new  Idealism  he  must  be  regarded  as 
a  pioneer. 

To  get  a  preliminary  view  of  the  struggle  for 
this  new  Idealism  which  Eucken  so  triumphantly 
represents,  and  of  the  crux  of  the  problem 
involved,  one  might  profitably  start  from  a  con- 
sideration of  the  relation  of  man  to  nature  as 
conceived  at  the  main  stages  in  the  development 
of  thought. 

To  the  Greeks  as  represented  by  Plato  or 
Aristotle  nature  was  not  merely  susceptible  of  the 
Divine,  but,  to  a  certain  extent,  herself  divine. 
This  meant  that  the  human  spirit  could  find  the 
sustenance  of  its  life  in  nature  and  seek  in  her  a 
reflection  of  those  laws  of  eternal  reason  which 
govern  spirit.  In  Christianity  nature,  from  being 
the  mirror  and  emanation  of  God,  fell  to  the  rank 
of  a  mere  "  thing,"  something  external  to  spirit 
and  created  ex  nihilo.  This  meant,  on  the  one 
hand,  a  loss  of  that  sense  of  mystery,  beauty  and 
wonder  which  made  Greek  art  immortal.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  secured  to  the  spirit  a  coming  to 
itself — a  consciousness  of  its  own  uniqueness. 
Asserting  itself  against  a  nature  which  lacked  the 
bread  by  which  spirit  lives,  it  made  for  self-assever- 
ation, freedom  of  action,  original  development. 
With  the  evolution  of  science  in  the  modern  sense 
of    the  term  the  problem  entered  upon  a  new 

50 


Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

phase.  At  first  science  was  content  to  explain 
the  so-called  material  processes  by  its  own  laws, 
and  to  stop  short  before  the  mysteries  of  life  and 
thought.  But  soon,  as  we  have  already  seen,  came 
the  encroachment  of  a  naturalism  which  subjected 
all  forms  of  being  to  its  laws  and  methods,  and 
man  became  part  of  nature,  a  mere  cog  in  the 
great  wheel.  At  the  same  time  the  old  security 
in  God  as  a  refuge  from  the  crushing  forces  of 
mechanical  process  was  shaken  by  a  new  criticism 
of  the  conception  of  God.  The  popular  God  was 
found  to  be  largely  no  more  than  nature  personified ; 
the  transcendental  God  evaded  thought  and 
vanished  into  thin  air  at  the  impact  of  speculation. 
Thus  the  problem  of  how  to  secure  the  franchise 
for  the  spiritual  life  took  a  sharp  and  tormenting 
form.  "  How,"  it  was  asked,  "  can  we  find  a 
guarantee  for  the  free  and  self-originated  life  of 
the  spirit  in  face  of  the  fact  that  for  us  spirit  is 
indissolubly  wedded  to  matter,  whose  laws  are 
self-sufficing  and  all-subjecting  ?  "  On  the  face 
of  it,  it  is  a  short  and  easy  course  to  surrender  to 
naturalism  ;  it  only  needs  a  lethargic  acquies- 
cence in  the  natural  order,  a  lazy  assent  to  that 
law  of  passivity  and  inaction  which  fixes  the  spirit 
in  furrows  of  convention,  mediocrity  and  torpor. 
And  supposing  we  revolt  against  so  mechanical 
and  degrading  a  theory,  have  we  any  right  to  do 
so,  any  ground  other  than  our  own  individual 
discontent  and  caprice  ?  To  intellectualism 
belongs  the  honour  of  having  made  front  against 

5i 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

naturalism  without  capitulating  to  subjectivism  ; 
but  intellectualism,  as  we  have  also  seen,  subjected 
life  to  logic,  and  reduced  reality  to  speculative 
principles  which  were  quite  as  stark  and  impene- 
trable as  the  naturalist  "  facts."  It  represents 
the  effort  of  the  jaded  spirit  to  find  rest  in  recon- 
structing a  universe  of  contradictions  by  means  of 
a  system  of  a  priori  (by  which  the  intellectualist 
means  necessary)  thought  ;  in  other  words,  to 
win  the  peace  that  cometh  by  understanding. 
But  this  contradictory  reality  of  ours  does  not  allow 
the  mind  to  find  peace  in  that  way,  for  it  is  alive 
and  creative,  and  therefore  irreducible  to  a  priori 
principles.  Whenever  we  think  we  have  so 
reduced  her,  she  attests  her  vital  originality  by 
escaping  and  disproving  our  intellectual  abstrac- 
tions which  are  after  all  only  the  fruit  of  our 
limited  observation  and  our  equally  limited 
mental  adaptability  to  the  free  and  incalculable 
movement  of  life.  Thus  intellectualism,  while 
triumphantly  asserting  the  superiority  and 
originality  of  spirit  over  against  nature,  fails  in 
placing  that  spirit  in  vacuo.  The  solution  of  the 
problem  can  only  be  found  in  a  point  of  view  which, 
while  refusing  to  sink  spirit  in  the  operations  of 
nature  and  securing  its  independence  and  creative 
life,  does  full  justice  to  the  independent  reality 
of  the  sense-world  and  to  its  connection  with  the 
life  of  the  spirit. 

Eucken's  solution   of  the   problem  appeals  to 
the  best  mind  of  to-day  as  the  most  vital  and 

52 


Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

valid  as  yet  offered,  and  his  concrete  idealism  may 
well  serve,  as  it  does,  as  the  rallying  point  for  all 
such  constructive  efforts.  Reviewing  the  rival 
syntagmata  of  naturalism  and  intellectualism,  his 
critique  is  marked  not  only  by  a  rare  penetration 
and  cogency,  but  by  that  sympathetic  fairness 
which  shows  his  practical  consistency  with  his 
own  principle  of  freedom.  A  study  of  Eucken's 
examination  of  the  two  great  rival  syntagmata  is 
the  best  possible  introduction  to  his  thought, 
and  the  student  should  first  turn  to  "  The  Unity 
of  the  Spiritual  Life,"  considered  by  many, 
including  Dr.  Boyce  Gibson,  to  be  the  highway  to 
Eucken's  philosophy,  and  then  trace  the  same 
subject  in  "  The  Struggle  for  Spiritual  Experi- 
ence," where  it  is  treated  in  a  different  and  very 
striking  way.  Having  passed  the  rival  syntagmata 
under  review,  and  shown  that  they  agree  in 
banishing  freedom  and  personality  from  the 
Universe,  Eucken  rejects  the  abstract  principle  of 
agreement  which  makes  the  truth  to  lie  in  what- 
ever is  common  to  two  rival  theories  (a  process 
which,  of  course,  leaves  their  differences  un- 
reconciled), and,  applying  his  own  reductive 
method,  finds  the  unifying  principle  in  personality. 
On  the  one  hand,  as  against  Naturalism,  he 
secures  the  reality  of  the  spirit  by  giving  it  a 
fastness  in  the  Absolute,  and  conceives  the 
supreme  spiritual  life  as  realised  in  and  by  man 
but  transcending  man's  appropriation  and 
standing  independent  of   (though  not  external  to) 

53 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

the  very  experience  which  realises  it.  In  this 
way  we  get  the  conception  of  a  spiritual  experience 
which  is  neither  subjective  emotion  nor  intellectual 
abstraction,  but  life  and  action.  On  the  other 
hand,  as  against  Intellect ualism,  he  does  not 
make  the  spirit  function  in  vacuo  ;  it  realises 
itself  by  acting  upon  a  real  sense-world,  attracting, 
penetrating  and  transfiguring  it.  He  neither 
subjects  it  to  natural  process,  nor  regards  it  as 
above  nature  in  the  Kantian  "  noumenal  "  sense, 
but  conceives  it  as  at  once  realising  the  sense- 
world  and  using  it  for  its  own  self-realisation. 
And  to  maintain  and  vindicate  the  freedom  and 
originality  of  personality  against  world-powers 
which  would  either  make  our  life  a  mere  pendant 
to  the  process  of  nature,  or  an  episode  in  the  life 
of  a  Hegelian  God,  is  not  only  a  speculative 
philosophy,  but  a  moral  venture.  It  is  a  heroic 
crusade  against  all  lethargy  and  mediocrity,  a 
passionate  assertion  of  the  eternal  Yea.  It  is 
enquiry  and  reason  ;  it  is  also  faith  and  adventure. 
When  thought  has  done  its  maturest  work  and 
we  know  all  we  can  know  concerning  the  free, 
creative  life  of  the  spirit,  we  must  still  dare  and 
venture.  We  must,  in  fact,  risk  a  wager,  and 
may  comfort  ourselves  with  Pascal's  famous  mot 
that  the  man  who  refuses  to  venture  upon  faith, 
wagers  all  the  same.  |This  does  not  mean,  of  course, 
that  Eucken's  philosophy  lacks  speculative  basis. 
It  would  be  difficult,  indeed,  to  find  a  thinker  of 
greater  weight,  thoroughness  and  grasp.     Moving 

54 


Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

with  a  certain  degree  of  caution,  his  analysis  is 
both  acute  and  comprehensive,  and  his  constructive 
work  massively  built  up  and  carefully  articulated  ; 
but  at  the  heart  of  his  philosophy  is  a  spiritual 
adventure.  Out  of  his  pages  a  light  shines  into 
the  darkness  of  the  great  human  problems,  and 
that  light  is  not  abstract  truth  but  the  life  of 
men,  eternal  life  which  is  the  gift  of  God  and  the 
passionate  and  perilous  quest  of  the  soul.  Taking 
personality  as  the  central  idea,  we  will  now  try 
and  illuminate  it  from  various  aspects  of  Eucken's 
thought. 

From  Individualism  to  Personality  :  the 
Negative  Movement 

We  begin  as  individuals  nestling  within  the 
narrow  circle  of  our  petty  egoist  interests  ;  we  are 
called  to  end  as  personalities  and  co-workers  with 
God.  This  spiritual  exodus  takes  place  through  a 
"  negative  movement."  Eucken  adopts  the 
familiar  Hegelian  three-stage  scheme  :  (i)  the 
stage  of  nature,  in  which  life  is  lived  under  the 
authority  of  sense,  expediency  and  convention  ; 
(2)  the  negative  stage,  in  which  the  individual 
breaks  with  the  natural  life  and  comes  into  touch 
with  the  life  of  the  absolute  Spirit  ;  (3)  the  re- 
constructive stage,  in  which,  having  received 
spiritual  liberty,  he  takes  the  world-problem  upon 
himself,  and  returns  to  the  old  world  to  assist 
in  its  spiritual  reconstitution  in  the  light  of  the 
new.     But  here  the  resemblance  ends.     Instead 

55 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

of  resolving  itself  into  the  flat  and  vapid  notion  of 
a  God  returning  to  Himself  and  redeeming  Himself 
in  a  blank  solitude  where  no  human  cry  ever  finds 
reverberation,  we  have  a  real  active  negation  of  a 
real  world,  a  struggle  in  which  the  spirit  challenges 
and  vindicates  its  own  freedom  and  underived 
reality,  and  puts  its  own  validity  to  the  supreme 
test.  This  negative  movement  is,  therefore,  not 
a  re-interpretation  of  the  world  sub  specie 
ceternitatis,  nor  a  return  from  the  illusion  of  a 
world  to  the  reality  of  a  Pantheistic  God,  but  an 
individual  struggle  from  nature  to  spirit,  a  contest 
in  which  man  is  the  gladiator,  not  merely  the 
stadium.  Whenever  a  human  soul  feels  the 
contradiction  of  life,  not  as  a  logical  riddle,  but 
as  his  own  life-problem,  the  negative  movement 
has  begun.  Whenever  conventional  ideals  and 
low  contents,  mean  standards  and  petty  aims,  are 
regarded  not  as  illusions  to  be  outgrown  but  as 
insults  to  personal  freedom  and  foes  of  the  spiritual 
life,  the  pilgrim  is  in  via.  It  is  not,  however, 
until  this  negative  movement,  which  is  sustained 
through  the  whole  process  of  spiritual  upbuilding, 
combines  with  a  positive  conviction  that  the  break 
with  the  given  is  complete,  and  can  be  followed  by 
a  victorious  return  upon  it  in  the  power  of  a  new 
world.  And  this  triumphant  descent  comes 
through  a  new  immediacy  of  spiritual  experience. 
The  spirit,  breaking  with  the  past  and  pressing 
ever  more  closely  against  the  most  inward  and 
secret  springs  of  its  being,  challenging  and  ques- 

56 


Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

tioning,  searching  and  testing,  struggling  with  all 
the  passion  of  one  who  has  "  burnt  his  boats  "  for 
a  certain  conviction  of  its  freedom  and  validity, 
becomes  susceptible  to  the  presence  and  power  of 
the  redemptive  activity  of  God.  Freedom  finds 
its  guarantee  in  grace  ;  moral  action  its  source  in 
a  salvation  "  straight  from  God."  Thus  the 
ethical  break  with  sense  becomes  a  religious 
awakening  and  renewal,  and  Eucken's  thought 
a  philosophy  of  conversion.  At  the  threshold  of 
the  spiritual  life  is  a  great  alternative — not  the 
Pro  and  contra  of  speculative  reason,  but  a 
moral  choice  involving  the  whole  man.  In  this 
choice  the  personality  chooses  or  rejects  itself, 
takes  itself  for  its  life-task,  or  dies  of  inanition 
and  inertia.  Here,  too,  it  is  true,  to  paraphrase 
Pascal,  that  he  who  chooses  not,  or  postpones  the 
choice,  has  also  chosen.  This  initial  "  Either-Or  " 
is  characteristic  of  a  philosophy  which  does  not 
merely  record  and  analyse  life,  but  claims  to  be 
part  of  life  and  a  factor  in  the  work  of  redemption. 
Eucken's  exposition  of  the  negative  movement 
and  the  conversion  from  sense  to  spirit  includes  a 
singularly  brilliant  and  satisfying  ethico-religious 
defence  of  freedom,  involving  a  reasoned  justifica- 
tion of  the  religious  categories  of  Grace  and 
Salvation.  The  spiritual  life  is  conceived  as 
an  activity  which  is  both  ours  and  God's — a 
redemptive  process  grounded  in  the  intimate 
harmony  between  our  human  freedom  and  His 
saving  initiative.     Perhaps  no  part  of  Eucken's 

57 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

work  has  more  gravity  and  momentum,  certainly 
none  is  richer  in  fertile  suggestion  than  his 
conception  of  the  spiritual  life  as  at  once  creating 
and  overcoming  within  itself  all  oppositions; 
so  that  freedom  implies  surrender,  immanence 
transcendence,  personality  the  Absolute.  In  his 
treatment  of  the  redemptive  interpenetration  of 
the  human  and  the  Divine,  Eucken  verges  on 
irrationalism.  To  take  a  well-known  and  char- 
acteristic passage  from  "  The  Truth  of  Religion  "  : 
"  The  origination  of  freedom  out  of  grace,  of  a 
self-sustaining  activity  out  of  a  condition  of 
dependence,  is  a  fundamental  fact  that  defies 
all  explanation.  As  the  supreme  condition  of  the 
spiritual  life  it  has  an  axiomatic  character." 
The  final  clause  is  undeniably  true  of  that 
life  which  is  so  intimate  with  ours  and  so  irrefut- 
ably sure  to  the  inner  experience,  vindicating 
itself  in  a  thousand  wondrous  ways  in  lives  in 
which  the  human  and  Divine  have  touched  and 
mingled.  What  could  be  more  personally  axio- 
matic than  the  power  of  this  spiritual  life,  brooding 
over  human  frailty  and  energising  it  into  redemp- 
tive action  ?  Thus  far  he  escapes  the  charge  of 
irrationalism  ;  it  is  when  he  denies  reason  an 
insight  into  revelation,  as  though  personality 
functioned  in  detachments  and  reason  alone 
of  all  human  faculties  were  refused  the  baptism  of 
grace  and  left  outside  the  temple,  that  such  a 
charge  has  a  certain  measure  of  justification. 
But  probably  this  irrationalism  is  more  apparent 

58 


Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

than  real,  andean  be  traced  to  Eucken's  persistent 
avoidance  of  terms  which  might  lend  themselves 
to  an  intellectualistic  interpretation. 

To  sum  up  Eucken's  doctrine  of  the  negative 
movement,  one  cannot  do  better  than  quote  the 
following  admirable  passage  from  Prof.  Gibson's 
"  Rudolf  Eucken's  Philosophy  of  Life  "   (p.  20)  ; 

A  negative  movement  from  a  self-centred,  self-enslaved 
individuality  to  a  God-centred  personality,  a  movement 
from  the  sense-world  to  the  self,  and  through  the  self 
inwardly  to  God,  is  at  once  the  assertion  and  the  salvation 
of  our  true  selfhood.  It  is  a  defence  of  our  personality 
against  all  naturalising  and  impersonalising  tendencies,  and, 
as  such,  it  is  the  indispensable  preliminary  to  our  faith  in  the 
efficacy  of  our  freedom.  The  defence  of  personality  is  the 
defence  of  freedom,  and  it  is  in  the  defence  of  personality, 
as  we  have  said,  that  lies  the  true  significance  of  the  negative 
movement.  The  positive  movement  consists  in  the 
redemption  of  the  world  into  sympathy  and  harmony  with 
those  spiritual  ideals — ideals  of  art,  morality  and  religion — 
apart  from  whose  sustaining  power  our  personality  would 
shrink  to  a  mere  pendant  of  the  mechanism  of  Nature. 
This  redemptive  process  is  grounded  in  the  intimate  harmony 
between  our  human  freedom  and  the  saving  initiative  and 
intention  of  God.  In  this  fundamental  conviction  we  have 
the  union  of  morality  and  religion  the  claim  of  a  religious 
basis  for  ethics,  and  the  establishment  of  Eucken's 
philosophy  as  an  ethico-religious  philosophy  of  life. 

Eucken's  Philosophy  as  a  Cosmic-Personal 
Religious  Idealism 

There  is  another  approach  to  this  transition 
from  individual  to  person,  by  way  of  a  more 
speculative   conception  :     we   can    view   it    as   a 

59 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

Cosmic- Personal  Idealism,  merging  at  a  certain 
point  into  a  religious  idealism.  We  begin  again 
with  the  two  life-centres.  There  is  the  natural 
life,  that  insulated  little  circle  embedded  in  the 
great  All,  yet  contracted  upon  itself,  referring 
everything  to  its  own  petty,  selfish  interests  and 
estimating  everything  according  to  the  standards 
of  pleasure  and  utility.  There  is  also  the  spiritual 
life,  which  frees  the  individual  from  the  slavery 
of  his  mean  interests,  cares  nothing  about  the 
pleasant  and  useful,  but  everything  about  the 
good  and  true,  and  pursues  its  high  ends  regardless 
of  the  demands  of  the  natural  life,  so  that  to  enter 
it  involves  a  stern  negation  of  the  immediately 
given.  This  life  of  the  spirit,  as  we  have  already 
seen,  can  be  interpreted  neither  in  terms  of 
mechanism  nor  in  terms  of  logic ;  it  is  an  independent 
spiritual  reality  which  brings  its  own  demands  to 
the  given  and  reconstitutes  it  according  to  its 
own  standards.  Thus,  embracing  and  reshaping 
reality,  it  clearly  cannot  be  derived  from  nature, 
for  nothing  can  be  transformed  by  a  power  having 
its  fulcrum  within  that  thing  ;  the  point  of  control 
must  lie  beyond  it.  Further,  such  a  spiritual  life 
implies  ethical  decision.  For  as  it  cannot  be 
mechanically  evolved  or  logically  necessitated, 
it  must  be  freely  willed ;  and  this  stamps  it  as 
personal  in  character.  And,  further  still,  it  is 
more  than  personal,  it  is  cosmic,  not  merely  a 
"  self,"  but  a  world,  for,  as  has  been  pointed 
out,    it    embraces    the    whole     of    reality,    and 

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Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

both    inwardly   apprehends    and    vitally    recon- 
stitutes it. 

Moreover,  while  man  is  not  only  natural,  but 
spiritual,  and  therefore  capable  of  appropriating 
all  the  possibilities  of  the  spiritual  life,  his  immediate 
position  is  that  of  an  enthralment  to  the  life  of 
sense,  and  Eucken  knows  as  little  as  the  New 
Testament  of  an  immediate  transition  from  nature 
to  spirit.  "  Ye  must  be  born  again,"  is  his  stern 
cry  also  to  a  sluggish  and  unspiritual  age. 
The  spiritual  approaches  man  with  an  austere 
and  revolutionary  demand  ;  he  must  choose  the 
unrealised  and  dimly  perceived.  And  to  make  so 
heroic  and  passionate  a  choice  demands  the 
conviction  that  the  thing  chosen  stands  above  the 
chooser's  feeble  and  intermittent  aspirations  and 
energies.  To  choose  a  spiritual  life  which  must  be 
maintained  in  an  unspiritual  world  of  contra- 
dictions and  tyrannies  is  only  possible  on  the 
assumption  that  this  life  has  its  roots  outside  and 
beyond  the  world  it  seeks  to  reconstruct ;  in  other 
words,  that  in  choosing  it  we  are  linking  ourselves 
on  to  the  Ultimate  Reality.  It  is  at  this  point  that 
the  conception  of  the  spiritual  life  merges  into  a 
conception  of  God,  and  the  Cosmic-Personal  into  a 
Religious  Idealism.  We  no  longer  carry  the 
weight  of  a  task  we  are  unequal  to  ;  the  task 
carries  us,  and,  relieved  from  taking  thought  how 
to  add  cubits  to  our  statures,  we  are  free  to  grow. 
We  can  now  work  heartily  and  joyously  for  those 
ideals  of  the  beautiful,  the  true  and  the  good  which 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

we  now  know  to  be  supremely  realised  in  God. 
This  takes  us  into  the  realm  of  what  Eucken  calls 
"  universal  "  religion.  It  has  its  parallel  in  the 
first  flush  of  joyful  security  that  accompanies  a 
typical  evangelical  "  conversion."  The  newly- 
awakened  soul  opens  its  eyes  to  the  assuring  smile 
of  God.  All  inner  cleavage,  all  isolation,  all 
sense  of  contradiction  in  the  universe  is  removed. 
The  alien  has  become  a  compatriot  in  Zion,  the 
stranger  a  citizen,  the  servant  a  son  and  heir. 
The  poor  man  has  become  rich,  for  all  things  are  his 
and  he  is  God's.  The  soul  is  at  home  in  God's 
world. 

This  is  not  the  final  reconciliation,  however. 
Soon  a  new  conflict  arises.  Instead  of  a  triumphal 
march  with  an  omnipotent  God  at  the  head,  the 
spiritual  pilgrimage  becomes  a  slow,  grim,  con- 
tracted path,  beset  with  stern  barriers  and 
malignant  foes.  Nature  brutally  ignores  spiritual 
interests,  and  drives  her  chariot  of  destruction 
over  the  very  Christ  of  God.  In  the  world  of  men 
wrong  triumphs,  and  unspiritual  ends  degrade  spirit- 
ual powers.  And  within  the  soul  there  is  an  even 
darker  and  more  turbulent  world  of  antinomies. 
There  the  struggle  for  spiritual  existence  has  its 
Armageddon,  and  the  crisis  is  fierce  and  pro- 
tracted ;  there  the  foe  is  most  treacherous  and 
victory  least  secure.  "  Just  when  we're  safest  " 
passion  snatches  the  reins  from  our  inexpectant 
hands,  and  the  bitterness  of  impure  motives 
surges  up  in  the  cup  of  sacrifice.     If  moral  and 

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Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

spiritual  achievement  were  all,  there  could  be  no 
escape  from  the  humiliation  and  despair  of 
failure.  But  at  this  point  a  new  realm  of  inward- 
ness beyond  mere  achievement  and  a  new  spiritual 
immediacy  are  opened  to  the  soul — a  spiritual 
life  of  supremely  personal  character,  and  therefore 
of  the  highest  validity,  though  it  may  not  find 
adequate  expression  in  "  deeds."  We  pass  from 
action  in  the  conventional  sense,  from  achievement 
and  accomplishment,  to  personality,  character, 
love,  disposition  and  intention  ;  and  these  have 
no  genuine  validity  except  when  they  originate 
in  the  intimacies  of  our  life  with  God's  ;  otherwise 
they  are  merely  the  subjective  moods  of  the 
grandiose  and  inflated  ego.  In  this  direct,  personal, 
inward  relation  to  the  Absolute  life  we  pass  from 
"  doing  "  to  "  becoming  "  what  we  aspire  to,  and 
from  the  mere  recognition  of  a  standard  which 
values  and  judges  to  communion  with  a  personal 
Omnipresence  that  inspires  and  redeems.  With 
this  we  have  passed  from  "  universal "  to 
"  characteristic  "  religion,  which  latter  stands  for 
the  triumphant  preservation  of  spiritual  life  in 
sharpest  contradiction  to  the  world,  for  the 
transcending  of  sorrow  not  by  evading,  but  by 
acknowledging  and  transmuting  it,  for  all  the 
great  Pauline  antinomies  of  glory  through  shame, 
joy  through  sorrow,  life  through  death.  Eucken 
makes  no  attempt  at  a  systematic  proof  of  that 
Supreme  Life  whose  penetrating  presence  is  the 
source  of  our  victory.     To  "  prove  "  it  one  would 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

need  to  find  a  higher  tribunal  than  itself  and 
surely  there  can  be  none  ;  its  proof  is  practical  : 
the  unflagging  stream  of  creative  energy  and 
spiritual  insight  that  flows  through  the  soul  that 
is  the  City  of  God.  Such  personal  certainty  is 
axiomatic,  and  it  is  realisation,  not  explanation, 
that  comes  to  the  relief  of  doubt — the  heroic  and 
unreserved  response  of  our  life  to  the  regenerating 
action  of  the  Divine  life  upon  us.  It  is  here  that 
Eucken  approximates  most  closely  to  the  heart 
of  Christianity,  and  perhaps  the  greatest  uncon- 
scious compliment  ever  paid  to  this  great  thinker 
was  the  dictum  of  a  poor  Methodist  woman,  who, 
on  hearing  his  ideas  explained  in  popular  speech, 
said,  "  But  I  know  that  already  ;  I  learnt  it  all 
at  class  meeting." 

Eucken's  Philosophy  as  an  Activism 

We  now  come  to  consider  Eucken's  personalistic 
philosophy  as  an  Activism.  The  term  first  appears 
in  "  Life's  Basis  and  Life's  Ideal,"  and  its  adoption 
in  lieu  of  the  wider  term  "  religious  Idealism  "  is 
indicative  of  a  definite  policy  evoked  by  the 
revival  in  Germany  of  a  pantheistic  romanticism 
whose  religious  affinities  are  with  the  mystics. 
But  an  activistic  position  is  indicated  already  in 
his  earlier  work — e.g.,  in  "  The  Unity  of  the 
Spiritual  Life,"  where  he  emphasises  the  self- 
consciousness  of  the  personality  as  self-activity 
directed  upon  a  world,  not  self-introspection  and 
self-intuition.     Action  is  the  true  spiritual  "  fact," 

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Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

the  vital  synthesis  in  which  the  opposition 
between  subject  and  object  is  transcended  by  the 
realisation  of  the  redeeming  Omnipresence,  and 
so  exclusive  an  insistence  upon  action  precludes 
any  just  valuation  of  the  mystical  elements  of  the 
spiritual  life.  In  "  Life's  Basis  and  Life's  Ideal  " 
Eucken  compares  Activism  with  two  modern 
philosophical  tendencies — Pragmatism  and  Con- 
templative jEstheticism.  Its  affinity  with 
Pragmatism  is  that  it  also  sees  the  key  to  truth 
not  in  intellectual  enquiry,  but  in  action.  Its 
opposition  to  Pragmatism  is  its  insistence  upon 
the  independent  character  of  reality  over  against 
our  experience  of  it.  We  do  not  bend  it  to  our 
human  needs  and  conditions  ;  it  bends  us  to  its 
standards  and  valuations.  Against  ^Esthetic 
Individualism  he  contends  that  "  we  are  not  born 
into  a  world  that  needs  only  to  be  translated,  as 
it  were,  into  the  language  of  immediacy  and 
enjoyment,  but  must  first  seek  and  win  it  for 
ourselves  through  a  radical  displacement  of  our 
life-centre."  For  a  clear,  well-balanced  summary 
of  Eucken's  formulation  of  Activism  as  we 
have  it  in  "  Life's  Basis  and  Life's  Ideal,"  and, 
indirectly,  in  the  brief  "  Main  Problems,"  I  turn 
once  more  to  Prof.  Gibson's  book  (pp.  174-5, 178): — 

Spirit  and  personality  are  problems  to  be  solved 
by  being  realised  through  action  that  responds  to  an 
inward  call  to  unity*  In  our  ordinary  human  experi- 
ence the  powers  that  make  for  dissolution  and  death 
are  closely  co-active  with  the  powers  that  make  for  concen- 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

tration  and  for  life.  But  it  is  hopeless  from  the  level  of  the 
given  to  attempt  any  mutual  adjustment  of  these  opposing 
powers,  for  the  standpoint  from  which  to  control  the  adjust- 
ment must  lie  beyond  the  given.  Archimedes  cannot  move 
the  world,  except  from  a  fulcrum  outside  it.  Our  only 
course  is  to  avail  ourselves  of  the  demands  made  upon  us 
by  the  very  creations  of  our  own  human  activity,  by  Science, 
Art,  Society,  and,  in  the  light  of  these,  win  our  way  slowly 
forwards  and  inwards  beyond  the  given,  towards  the  still 
undiscovered  centre  of  our  spiritual  life.  Each  step  in  the 
way  must  be  taken  through  some  form  of  spiritual  work — of 
work,  that  is,  which,  in  the  name  of  an  ideal  of  beauty,  truth, 
or  right,  helps  to  produce  and  realise  the  very  life  that  inspires 
it.  Thereby  we  build  up  for  ourselves  that  new  immediacy 
which  can  alone  secure  us  the  rest  and  confidence  our  nature 
so  deeply  craves.  Indeed,  the  very  process  through  which 
our  personality  grows  towards  its  own  unity,  brings  about  it 
the  protecting  presence  of  that  Absolute  Life  which  we  can 
realise  only  as  we  realise  ourselves.  The  fixity  to  which  our 
lives  aspire  grows  upon  us  through  the  very  stress  of  the 
work  to  which  we  resolutely  commit  the  welfare  of  our  souls. 
The  immediacies  of  the  spirit  come  thus  to  displace  the 
immediacies  of  sense  and  inclination,  causing  these  to 
sink  back  to  a  subordinate  and  phenomenal  level.  .  .  . 

No  truth  can  be  complete  which  is  not  my  truth — i.e., 
at  once  a  truth  for  me  and  a  truth  won  through  my  own 
activity,  nor  can  truth  have  any  real  compelling  power 
except  in  so  far  as  it  has  been  won  against  resistance,  and 
comes  to  us  as  the  reconciling  of  some  opposition  that  has 
been  vitally  felt  and  earnestly  met.  We  might  even  say, 
in  relation  to  the  problems  of  the  life  process,  that  it  is  our 
activities  themselves  which  are  false  or  true.  In  so  far  as 
they  raise  us  to  the  immediacies  of  the  spiritual  world  that 
is  still  in  the  making,  and  so  confirm  and  organise  our 
spiritual  unity,  we  may  characterise  them  as  true.  Truth 
is  the  native  endeavour  of  our  life  to  realise  its  own  high 
destiny. 

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Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

The  essential  truth-problem  is  how  to  find  Reality,  the 
test  of  the  truth  of  an  activity  being  its  power  to  unify  the 
life  and  overcome  the  oppositions  which  arise  so  profusely 
within  it.  When  the  nature  of  Truth  is  so  conceived,  the 
old  opposition  between  Truth  and  Freedom  ceases  to  trouble 
us.  For  the  essential  Truth  can  be  won  only  through  the 
freedom  of  the  spiritual  life.  Truth  is  no  longer  some 
achieved  expression  of  Reality  to  which  our  free  life,  despite 
all  its  immanent  drawings  in  a  contrary  direction,  must 
unconditionally  submit.  The  Truth  is  as  unachieved  as  is 
our  freedom  or  our  spiritual  destiny,  and  it  is  in  the  further 
achieving  of  it  that  we  realise  our  freedom. 

Eucken's  Activism  more  than  any  aspect  of  his 
philosophy  has  been  eagerly  seized  upon  by 
Christian  teachers  as  a  philosophical  vindication 
of  religious  categories.  But  while  this  Activism 
affords  many  a  point  d'aj>pui  for  the  theologian, 
and  leaves  room  for  such  a  doctrine  as  that  of 
Justification  by  Faith,  where  man's  greatest  moral 
act  is  a  response  to  God's  highest  possibility,  and 
for  a  supreme  focal  act  of  God  such  as  the  act  of 
Christ  on  the  Cross,  Eucken  himself  does  not 
acknowledge  these  dogmatic  implications,  and, 
taking  his  work  as  a  whole,  there  are  as  many 
elements  in  it  that  militate  against  such  implica- 
tions as  elements  that  support  them.  Eucken's 
relation  to  dogmatic  Christianity  will  be  dealt 
with  in  the  next  chapter  ;  here  it  is  sufficient  to 
name  certain  important  affinities  between  his 
Activism  and  the  Christian  doctrine  of  Grace  and 
Redemption,  for  that  Activism  will  prove  an  aid  in 
the  replacement  not  only  of  a  superseded  orthodoxy, 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

but  of  an  outlived  liberalism  by  a  theology  at  once 
modern  and  positive,  is  undoubtedly  true. 

Activism  gives  us  a  world  which  demands  from 
us  not  portrayal  or  interpretation,  but  realisation 
and  achievement  through  heroic  spiritual  activity. 
It  makes  will,  energy,  moral  verve  and  virility 
central  to  self-realisation.  It,  therefore,  implies  a 
God  not  one  whit  more  anaemic,  aesthetic,  romantic, 
speculatively  intellectual,  or  theosophically  mysti- 
cal than  the  personalities  who  trace  their  spiritual 
existence  to  His  inspiration  and  grace.  It 
implies  a  God  who  is  definable  in  terms  of  spiritual 
energy  and  ethical  vitality,  and  it  leaves  room,  as 
has  been  said,  for  the  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ.  It  postulates  a  spiritual  world  which 
does  not  merely  envelop  and  absorb  us,  but  which 
acts  upon  us  and  transforms  us.  It  makes 
a  complete,  moral,  personal  act  determinative  of 
a  personal  relation  to  ultimate  reality.  Theology 
steps  in  at  this  point  and  asks,  "  What  is  man's 
supreme  moral  act  ?  What  is  central  in  man's 
relation  to  God  ?  What  is  the  action  of  God  upon 
man,  and  how  is  it  focussed  and  centralised  ?  " 
Activism  gives  a  partial  answer,  leaves  room  for 
some  elements  of  the  specifically  Christian 
solution,  and  adumbrates  the  denial  of  others. 

Eucken's  Philosophy  of  History  :    the 
Living  Past. 

One  of  the  first  concerns  of  a  truly  moral 
personality  is  to  determine  its  relation  to  the  past. 

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Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

The  past,  together  with  that  retroactive  urgency  of 
the  future  we  call  our  ideals,  is  the  stuff  that  the 
present  is  made  of.  To  the  "  man  in  the  street  " 
who  happens  to  be  also  a  student  of  history,  be 
it  the  history  of  his  own  soul  or  of  the  world,  the 
past  is  either  a  tyranny  or  an  inspiration,  more 
often  a  tyranny.  Remembrance  of  personal 
failure  leaves  not  only  a  sting  and  a  scar,  but  a 
deadly  paralysis,  a  cowardice  that  poisons  the 
springs  of  action.  The  past  of  the  race,  the 
nation,  the  Church,  is  also  in  modern  times  felt 
more  often  as  a  burden  and  an  incubus,  rather 
than  as  a  source  of  present  action  and  develop- 
ment. Tradition  has  laid  its  dead  hand  upon  the 
young  idea  ;  the  heirloom  of  a  stereotyped 
convention  paralyses  creative  effort.  The  number 
of  those  who  find  peace  in  submitting  to  the 
authority  of  tradition  and  in  working  out  their 
own  salvation  within  its  pale  is  steadily  decreasing. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  crude  revolt  against  the 
tyranny  of  the  past,  which,  silkworm-like,  thought 
to  evolve  the  web  of  the  present  out  of  its  own 
substance,  cut  out  of  its  context  in  time,  has 
outlived  itself.  No  affectation  or  delusion  of 
fresh,  independent  life  can  galvanise  the  severed 
member  into  anything  more  than  nervous  reflex 
action,  and  the  pose  becomes  first  grotesque  and 
then  spectral.  Escape  from  the  dark  vault 
of  the  past  and  the  numbing  touch  of  the  dead 
hand  does  not  lie  that  way ;  even  if  the  action 
of  the  dead  upon  us  could  be  safely  ignored,  yet 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

we  cannot  waive  our  right  and  neglect  our  duty 
of  retrospective  action  upon  them  without  vital 
loss. 

And  it  would  seem  that  it  is  given  to  our 
young  century  to  discover  and  realise  for  itself 
the  plasticity  of  a  past  which  we  once  saw 
menacing  and  rigid  as  destiny.  It  was  indeed 
at  the  beginning  of  the  century  that  Maeterlinck  f 
wrote  the  essay  which  will  long  remain  the  classic 
expression  of  this  new  vision.  "  The  force  of  the 
past,"  says  Maeterlinck,  "  is  indeed  one  of  the 
heaviest  that  weigh  upon  men.  .  .  .  And 
yet  there  is  none  more  docile,  more  eager  to  follow 
the  direction  we  could  so  readily  give,  did  we  but 
know  how  best  to  avail  ourselves  of  this  docility. 
■  .  .  In  reality  it  is  alive  ;  and  indeed,  for 
many  of  us,  endowed  with  a  profounder,  more 
ardent  life  than  either  present  or  future.  In 
reahty  this  dead  city  is  often  the  hot-bed  of  our 
existence,  and  in  accordance  with  the  spirit  in 
which  men  return  to  it  shall  some  find  all  their 
wealth  there,  and  others t  lose  what  they  have. 
.  .  .  The  conquerors  in  this  world,  .  .  . 
these  know  instinctively  that  what  appears  to 
exist  no  longer  is  still  existing  intact,  that  what 
appeared  to  be  ended  is  only  completing  itself. 
They  know  that  the  years  time  has  taken  from 
them  are  still  in  travail ;  still,  under  their  new 
master,  obeying  the  old.  They  know  that  their 
past   is   for    ever   in    movement.     .     .     .     That 

1  "  The  Past,"  in  his  volume  "  The  Buried  Temple." 
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Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

however  remote  or  vast  the  shadow  may  be  that 
stretches  behind  them,  they  have  only  to  put 
forth  a  gesture  of  gladness  or  hope  for  the 
shadow  at  once  to  copy  this  gesture,  and,  flashing 
it  back  .  .  .  extract  unexpected  treasure 
from  all  this  wreckage.  .  .  .  They  know  that 
they  have  retrospective  action  on  all  bygone 
deeds  ;  and  that  the  dead  themselves  will  annul 
their  verdicts  in  order  to  judge  afresh  a  past  that  to- 
day has  transfigured  and  endowed  with  new  life." 

Following  upon  a  philosophical  age  which 
imagined  itself  freed  from  all  historical  connections, 
the  nineteenth  century  was  characterised  by  an 
unprecedented  development  of  the  historic  sense. 
It  saw  everything  from  the  historical  point  of  view 
— understanding  history  as  a  consecutive  chain 
of  "  becoming,"  a  continuous  stream  of  successive 
phases  of  development .  Everything  was  threaded 
on  to  the  historical  string,  and  even  the  life  of  the 
spirit  tended  to  become  a  mere  "  historical 
category."  On  the  one  hand,  such  a  view  freed 
us  from  the  old  conception  which  attached  the 
working  of  eternal  truth  exclusively  to  one 
definite  point  in  history,  from  whence  it  flowed 
through  time  ;  on  the  other,  it  turned  eternal 
truth  into  ephemeral  opinion,  for  in  a  continuous 
stream  of  becoming  truth  attenuates  to  a  fleeting 
impression,  and  reality  is  reduced  to  a  realm  of 
shadows.  And,  moreover,  if  history  is  conceived 
as  a  logical  and  organic  development  which  needs 
only  to  be  understood  in   its   reasonableness,  its 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

inevitable  and  unbroken  succession,  then  we  are 
betrayed  into  that  very  slavery  to  the  past  which 
our  predecessors  tried  vainly  but  nobly  to  escape. 
We  become  passive  recipients,  "  train-bearers  of 
alien  ages  "  ;  we  do  not  get  beyond  the  laborious 
and  pedestrian  art  of  re-living  a  life  that  is 
external  to  us. 

To  this  enervating  and  sapping  attitude  towards 
the  past  Eucken  opposes  a  view  of  history  by 
which  the  past,  whether  of  the  individual  or 
of  the  race,  becomes  a  theatre  for  the  achievement 
of  that  task  of  self-realisation  which  is  the 
characteristic  of  free  personality.  But  this 
involves  a  distinction  between  two  elements  in 
history.  There  is  an  unbroken  stream  of  mere 
"  happenings  " — the  rise  and  fall  of  peoples,  the 
succession  of  lights  that  fail  and  lives  that  fall 
dead.  There  is  also — focussed  in  the  great 
pioneers  and  epoch-makers — something  that 
distinguishes  itself  from  that  stream,  and  pulls 
against  it  ;  something  in  time  yet  not  of  time  ; 
something  creative  and  militant  that  presupposes 
a  kingdom  of  eternal  truth  behind  and  in  history, 
giving  it  meaning  and  value.  Thus  we  get  a 
spiritual  history — the  struggle  of  the  ages  to 
realise  the  eternal  order.  Viewed  from  this 
standpoint  the  ages  do  not  rise  one  out  of  the  other 
in  calm,  unbroken  sequence  or  organic  growth.  The 
spiritual  life  which  accompanies  them  must  sink 
into  decadence,  unless  it  is  renewed  and  created 
by  each   successive   age   for   itself.     And   while 

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Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

each  age  must  ultimately  seek  affiliation  with  all 
that  is  great  and  good  in  the  past,  and  take  its 
place  as  a  link  in  the  chain,  it  must  also,  and  first 
of  all,  assert  its  independence  over  against  the 
past,  and  win  its  own  spiritual  life  in  opposition 
and  contrast  to  what  has  gone  before.  Thus  our 
life  is  at  once  a  struggle  against,  and  a  continua- 
tion of,  the  past. 

This  attitude  towards  history  is  most  con- 
vincingly and  brilliantly  applied  in  "  The  Problem 
of  Human  Life,"  one  of  the  most  important  of 
Eucken's  books,  and  perhaps  the  most  popular 
with  English  readers.  To  follow  his  account  of  the 
great  thinkers  of  the  world  is  to  be  initiated  into 
a  spiritual  philosophy  of  history  that  transforms 
the  world  for  us.  An  examination  of  Eucken's 
historical  method  is  outside  the  scope  of  this  book, 
but  a  few  remarks  on  what  he  holds  should  be  our 
attitude  towards  these  great  ones  of  the  past  may 
supplement  our  consideration  of  his  conception  of 
history. 

The  first  condition  is  independence.  Only 
between  free  souls  can  there  be  true  friend- 
ship, and  the  sacrifice  of  independence  does  as 
little  honour  to  the  master  as  to  the  disciple. 
That  such  independence  is  not  incompatible  with, 
but  rather  founded  on,  reverence  need  hardly  be 
emphasised.  When  we  thus  approach  the  great 
minds  we  do  not  merely  receive  instruction,  but 
reach  to  the  fontal  energies  that  have  moulded 
their  thought.     Our  reverent  wonder  turns  their 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

findings  into  problems,  their  answers  into  new 
questions  ;  our  spiritual  independence  applies  the 
creative  energy  we  come  in  contact  with  to  the 
problems  of  our  own  time.  We  are  not  only 
disciples,  but  co-workers  with  the  great  thinkers. 
And  our  relation  to  them  is  not  merely  one  of 
subjective  admiration  or  enthusiastic  warmth  ; 
it  is  rather  the  contact  with  a  power  that  frees 
us  from  the  narrowness  of  the  ego  and  the  moment, 
and  attunes  us  to  a  timeless  spiritual  present 
"  which  has  the  steadfastness  and  organised 
variety  of  a  world." 

Such  a  view  of  the  philosophy  of  history  is  of 
the  most  vital  interest  for  Christian  thought. 
Once  its  validity  is  grasped,  all  such  attempts  at 
mechanical  "  restorations "  of  Christianity  in 
such  returns  to  the  primitive  as  the  crude  con- 
ceptions of  pietism  or  the  impassioned  gospel  of  a 
Tolstoy  are  shown  to  be  puerile  and  impossible. 
To  attempt  to  reproduce  the  past  is  to  fall  from 
worship  to  idolatry,  and  to  lose  one's  spiritual 
birthright.  And  must  we  not  include  in  this 
category — though  we  cannot  claim  Eucken  for 
such  a  view — that  return  to  the  Jesus  of  the 
Gospels,  and  that  more  recent  return  to  the  Jesus 
behind  the  Gospels,  to  which  so  much  of  the  finest 
critical  scholarship  and  spiritual  insight  have  been 
devoted  of  late  ?  This  inclusion  could  justifiably 
be  made  whenever  such  a  return  is  narrowly 
conceived  in  opposition  to  the  Christ  of  the 
Church's  collective  experience  and  consciousness, 

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Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

and  not  merely  as  fundamental  to  a  valuation  and 
appropriation  of  such  experience,  in  which  latter 
case  it  is,  of  course,  not  only  legitimate  but 
essential. 

Again,  this  conception  of  history  is  im- 
portant for  our  attitude  towards  historical 
dogmatic  Christianity  in  helping  us  to  realise  that 
even  our  most  completely  justified  revolt 
against  traditional  dogma  must  be  something  more 
positive  and  appropriative  than  mere  revolt,  if 
it  is  not  to  be  an  intellectual  pose  or  a  childish 
mood.  We  must  approach  the  old  crystallisa- 
tions of  conviction  not  only  with  the  sympathetic 
understanding  of  their  historical  importance — 
nineteenth  century  "  historicism  "  gave  us  that — 
but  with  a  humble  and  reverent  understanding  of 
their  importance  for  us  who  share  the  spiritual  life 
that  gave  birth  to  them,  and  recognise  beneath 
the  surface  of  contemporary  limitation  elements 
of  eternal  validity  by  which  we  live.  Only  then 
can  our  dogmatic  past  cease  to  be  either  an  incubus 
or  a  dead  heirloom  when  we  make  it  both  a  minister 
and  a  source  of  our  life. 

But  this  view  of  the  past  as  an  eternal  spiritual 
present  has  a  still  deeper  significance  when  we 
apply  it  to  the  individual  soul,  after  the  manner  of 
Maeterlinck,  and  view  it  in  relation  to  the  sins  and 
failures  which  make  the  past  such  an  unspeakable 
burden  upon  the  anguished  hearts  of  men.  The 
soul,  too,  has  a  history  :  this  is  indeed  the  eternal 
value  of  man  that  he  can  have  a  history  and  give 

75 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

it  continuity.  As  long  as  his  history,  his  past,  is 
a  destiny  to  him — a  series  of  unmalleable  happen- 
ings, a  grim  necessity  in  which  he  is  enchained — 
he  lives  in  a  vault  of  death  and  has  not  yet  begun 
to  be  a  personality.  But  once  he  awakes  to  the 
fact  that  by  the  retroactive  force  of  moral 
personality  he  can  translate  the  events  of  the  past 
from  necessity  into  freedom,  control  for  good 
happenings  over  which  he  had  once  no  control, 
transmute  past  evil  by  the  very  moral  reaction  it 
has  produced  in  him,  lay  the  ghosts  of  conscience  by 
the  moral  self-judgment  whose  severity  justifies, 
he  enters  upon  that  triumphant  spiritual  life 
which  does  not  only  grasp  a  new  world,  but 
reconstitutes  the  old  by  its  power.  And  further, 
it  is  here  that  grace,  forgiveness,  salvation, 
justification  by  faith  may  be  brought  within  the 
grasp  of  our  minds  as  well  as  of  our  hearts.  For 
if  our  present  insight  can  penetrate  and  mould  the 
past,  if  our  self-judgment  and  bitter  revulsion 
from  evil  can  save  the  past  and  transfigure  the 
blackest  crime,  what  of  the  saving  insight  of  God 
the  Holy,  whose  thought  is  so  intimate  with  us  that 
it  pierces  the  mind  of  man  to  kill  and  to  make 
alive  ?  If  we  are  not  to  be  left  in  that  irrationalism 
which  denies  the  right  of  philosophy  to  deal  with 
historical  fact,  and  leaves  the  intellect  outside 
the  redeeming  act  of  God,  we  must  make  some 
attempt  at  a  philosophical  realisation  of  grace  and 
forgiveness,  and  we  may  find  our  starting  point 
here. 

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Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

The  Socialised  Personality  and  the  Cult  of 
the  Superman 

We  are  not  yet  fully  developed  personalities  ; 
we  are  persons  in  the  making,  slowly  moulded  by 
social  and  Divine  relations.  And  of  all  the  enemies 
we  encounter  on  our  pilgrim's  progress  towards 
personality  none  is  more  insidious  than  that 
aesthetic  form  of  individualism  which,  while 
rooted  in  a  naturalistic  conviction,  speaks  the 
language  of  idealism.  Moreover,  it  has  real 
affinities  with  the  quest  of  ideal  personality  in 
its  passionate  protest  against  the  cult  of  the 
industrial  machine,  and  the  dehumanising 
character  of  a  materialistic  culture,  as  well  as  in 
its  aspiration  towards  freedom  and  self-expression. 
This  type  of  individualism  is  closely  associated 
with  the  name  of  Nietzsche,  wjio  is  made  respon- 
sible for  all  the  brutal  self-assertion  and  nauseous 
arrogance  which  some  of  his  disciples  have  written 
and  practised  into  a  vicious  popularity  in  the 
master's  name.  In  England  especially,  Mr.  Wells's 
super-mannikins,  prancing  victoriously  through 
the  literature  of  the  half-cultured,  have  prejudiced 
the  nobler  public  against  a  thinker  who,  in  spite  of 
lamentable  aberrations  and  a  certain  intellectual 
rather  than  moral  defaillance,  has  voiced  the 
legitimate  demands  of  the  "  enjoying  "  soul  in  a 
way  worth  our  closest  attention.  Eucken  does 
full  justice  to  the  sensitive,  feminine  temperament 
and  aristocratic  soul  of  Nietzsche,  and  recognises 

77 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

to  the  full  the  many  valuable  moral  and  religious 
suggestions  that  stud  his  pages.  But  he  also 
opposes  him  most  trenchantly  as  the  representative 
of  an  emotional  subjectivism  that  fails  in  achieving 
its  distinctive  end,  the  attainment  of  an  inward 
self-sufficiency ;  for  the  cult  of  sensibility  can 
never  yield  that  inner  world  which  alone  is  the 
root  and  source  of  self-sufficiency.  For  Eucken 
personality  is  created  and  moulded  by  social 
influences,  and  finds  itself  only  as  it  takes  its  place 
and  renders  service  in  the  social  movements  which 
surround  it.  The  aesthetic  egoist,  who  not  only 
shirks,  but  defies  and  mocks,  those  social  duties 
and  sympathies  which  alone  go  to  the  shaping  of 
personality,  sinks  intosa  soulless  isolation  which  is 
insanity,  though  the  brain  remain  as  sharp  as  a 
two-edged  sword.  To  escape  this  inevitable 
Nemesis  the  devotees  of  aesthetic  individualism 
tend  more  and  more  to  form  esoteric  cults.  Here 
again,  in  so  far  as  this  is  a  genuine  revolt  against 
mediocrity,  the  movement  has  affinities  with  a 
true  philosophy  of  life.  But  instead  of  seeking  to 
combat  the  mediocre  in  the  individual  in  the 
interests  of  the  heroic,  their  battle  is  with  a 
supposedly  common-place  and  philistine  world. 
To  segregate  the  elect,  the  Schone  Seelen,  from  the 
common  herd  is  the  height  of  their  ambition,  and 
the  result  is  a  coterie  of  hysterically  "  uncon- 
ventional "  neuropaths,  whose  insatiable  appetite 
for  the  exotic  and  esoteric  is  commensurate  with 
their  dullness  to  all  large  interests,  political,  social 

78 


4 


Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

and  religious.  And  in  the  end  the  pendulum  often 
swings  back,  and  a  fat  and  sensual  culture  claims 
them  for  its  own. 

It  is  not  merely  in  the  strong  repudiation  of 
the  illegitimate  demands  and  bastard  ideals  of 
emotional  subjectivism,  however,  that  Eucken's 
critique  of  this  tendency  is  peculiarly  valuable  at 
the  present  day,  when  the  cult  is  encroaching 
upon  British  society.  He  also  meets  its  legitimate 
demands  by  a  conception  of  religion  which  fulfils 
the  righteous  aspirations  of  the  enjoying  soul  in 
revolt  against  a  religion  which  appears  to  it  as 
"  a  subterranean  conspiracy  against  life."  To  the 
Nietzschean  distortion  of  Christianity,  which  is 
nothing  more  than  a  degenerate  and  wilte< 
Buddhism,  and  to  the  present  form  of 
Christianity  with  its  too  passive  and  negative 
attitude  towards  life,  he  opposes  a  Christianity  of 
joyousness  and  action — a  Christianity  which  is  not 
merely  a  therapeutic  agent  in  the  cure  of  human 
frailty,  but  the  source  of  a  life  of  triumphant 
vigour  and  abounding  zest.  To  the  untutored 
greed  of  life  and  the  colossal  egoism  of  the  super- 
man, he  opposes  a  divine  call  to  self-realisation, 
through  self-diremption  and  self-return,  the 
dialectic  being,  of  course,  one  of  freedom  and  not 
of  logic. 

It  need  hardly  be  pointed  out  that  all  this  has  a 
cogent  bearing  upon  the  religious  individualism 
which  has  been  the  plague  of  Protestant  Christen- 
dom since  the  Reformation.     Our  public  ethic  is 

79 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

so  crude  and  un-Christian,  not  because  a  world 
with  its  back  to  Christ  is  defeating  the  endeavours 
of  the  Christian  social  conscience  among  us,  but 
because  of  the  parochial  preoccupations  of  a 
Church  sapped  by  private  pieties,  congregational 
busy-ness,  dilettante  theosophies,  romantic  phil- 
anthropies. Much  has  been  said  about  the  intimate 
connection  between  a  deep  sense  of  the  "  cruciality 
of  the  Cross  "  and  a  large  public  ethic  ;  but  it 
must  not  be  the  Cross  without  the  Kingdom,  nor 
the  Kingdom  without  the  Christ  in  whom  it  is 
ours.  And,  if  the  Church  is  to  be  saved,  it  must 
turn  from  the  quietist  and  romantic  conception  of 
religion  as  an  ambulance,  or  as  a  delicate  and 
esoteric  culture  for  chastened  minds,  to  the 
Gospel  of  an  abounding  life,  the  secret  of  the  true 
joie  de  vivre.  Compare  the  triumphantly  joyous 
atmosphere  breathing  through  such  a  book  as 
Maxim  Gorky's  "  Comrades, "with  the  stale,  triste 
air  of  our  conventional  religious  life.  In  this  book 
we  have  the  record  of  a  people  living  beneath  the 
shadow  of  oppression,  imprisonment,  torture  and 
death,  yet  overflowing  with  an  enthusiasm,  a 
warmth  of  fellowship,  a  sense  of  glory,  a  deep  and 
thrilling  joy,  which  is  more  akin  to  the  genius  of 
the  New  Testament  than  the  life  of  many  of  our 
Churches.  The  Church  of  to-day  hardly  knows 
what  rejoicing  in  the  Holy  Spirit,  or  in  any  other 
spirit  for  that  matter,  means.  And  until  we 
recapture  the  glowing  gladness  of  Christ's  world, 
with  its  clouds  drenched  in  golden  glory  and  the 

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Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

flower  of  joy  bursting  from  the  very  rifts  of  the 
bruised  reed,  we  can  never  hope  to  win  those  en- 
joying souls  who  belong  to  the  world's  grande  race. 

We  have  traced  in  a  popular  way  the  funda- 
mental elements  of  Eucken's  philosophy  of  life, 
omitting  many  interesting  aspects  of  a  more 
purely  technical  nature.  Eucken's  theory  of 
knowledge,  which  is  of  supreme  importance  for  a 
more  thorough  appreciation  of  his  work,  and  which 
has  hitherto  only  come  to  us  in  an  unfinished  form, 
apparently  tending  towards  irrationalism,  is  likely 
to  be  given  us  shortly  in  its  final  form,  and  is 
therefore  not  touched  upon  here.  His  defective 
valuation  of  mysticism  will  be  touched  upon  in 
the  next  chapter,  but  its  complete  discussion 
would  require  a  detailed  consideration  of  his 
truth-standard  and  his  negative  attitude  towards 
psychology.  There  are  also  certain  lines  of 
development  and  change  of  emphasis  in  Eucken's 
philosophy,  such  as  the  preponderance  of  the 
absolutist  over  the  humanist  aspect  in  his  later 
work,  which  cannot  he  entered  upon  here.  Nor 
is  this  the  place  for  showing  how  his  reaction 
against  intellectualism  has  led  to  an  under- 
valuation of  the  power  of  a  well-grasped  concept, 
and  so  introduced  a  chasm  into  that  conception 
of  the  spiritual  life  in  which  mind  and  will  function 
as  a  unity.  It  must  be  noted,  however,  that  this 
does  not  mean  that  Eucken  founds  his  philosophy 
on  "  faith  "  or  "  feeling  " — on   the   contrary,  he 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

insists  upon  a  speculative  basis — but  only  that 
his  philosophical  courage  does  not  extend  to  an 
adventure  of  the  reason,  as  well  as  of  the  will,  upon 
those  ultimate  sources  of  the  spiritual  life  which 
no  intellectualist  recognises  more  clearly  than  he. 
A  certain  distrust  both  of  the  power  of  a  concept 
over  the  mind  and  of  the  power  of  the  spiritual 
reason  to  delve  in  the  mystical  foundations  of 
the  spiritual  life  puts  a  flaw  upon  the  very 
"  freedom-philosophy  "  which  is  his  strength  and^, 
glory.  Viewed  as  an  ethico-religious  treatment'  ' 
of  the  problem  of  free  will,  his  defence  of  freedom 
is,  to  quote  Professor  Boyce  Gibson,  "  the  most 
radical  in  its  criticism,  the  most  stable  and  satis- 
fying in  its  reconstruction  "  ;  viewed  as  a  state- 
ment of  personal  freedom  it  is  slightly  vitiated  by 
the  two  negative  tendencies  mentioned  above,  and 
by  his  persistent  refusal  to  address  himself  to  a 
psychological  theory  of  self-consciousness.  But 
these  slight  strictures  are  put  forward  with  the 
greatest  possible  tentativeness,  for  a  final  valua- 
tion of  Eucken's  philosophy  will  not  be  possible 
until  we  are  in  possession  of  his  complete  theory 
of  knowledge. 

Eucken  comes  to  the  British  mind  at  a  time  when 
its  old  sturdy  and  na'ive  commonsense  philosophy 
and  religious  certitude  have  been  badly  shaken  by 
a  half  assimilated  mish-mash  of  modern  philo- 
sophemes.  At  the  mercy  of  its  uncoordinated 
perceptions  and  impressions,  it  has  become 
somewhat  like  a  child's  garden,  in  which  many 

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Eucken  and  his  Philosophy  of  Life 

seeds  are  sown  but  nothing  very  much  ever  comes 
up.  To  such  a  temper  Eucken's  philosophy  brings 
that  pragmatic  and  actualistic  quality  which  a 
shrewd  and  reality-loving  people  demands,  and 
that  stability  and  depth  of  speculative  ground- 
work which  its  thin  and  restless  impressionism 
needs.  To  him  a  philosophy  of  life  does  not  mean 
a  philosophy  which  follows  life  and  explains  it, 
but  a  philosophy  which  is  part  of  life  and  a  method 
of  redemption.  Thus  the  problems  of  freedom  and 
personality  are  not  logical  conundrums  to  be 
solved  by  wrangling  "  Gelehrte  "  from  behind 
their  respective  "  Pults  "  (desks),  but  life-issues 
to  be  fought  and  striven  for  in  a  Holy  War.  Not 
the  intellect,  sitting  in  large  leisure  in  its  walled 
house,  but  the  spirit,  rising  up  in  wrath  against 
a  natural  order  which  denies  its  autonomy  and 
pours  contempt  upon  its  aspirations,  is  the 
philosopher  in  the  university  of  life.  His  philo- 
sophy is  the  history  of  the  soul  putting  the 
inward  whisper  of  its  independence  and  divinity 
to  the  supreme  test  in  defying  the  principalities 
and  powers  that  would  brutalise  it.  Life  is  not 
a  debating  society  for  him  ;  it  is  a  battle-field, 
where  rival  powers  are  striving  in  a  gigantic  combat 
for  the  soul  of  man.  His  interest  in  the  relief  of 
Mansoul  can  only  be  described  by  the  much-abused 
word  "  evangelical."  "  The  emergence  into  new 
life  of  the  humblest  soul,"  he  once  said  to  the 
present  writer,  in  tones  of  deep  and  enthusiastic 
conviction,  "  is  more  to  me  than  the  birth  and 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

discovery  of  a  thousand  new  worlds."  But  while 
gloriously  free  from  the  intellect ualist  microbe,  and 
from  the  narrowing  disabilities  of  the  muck-raking 
"  Gelehrter  ("  we  suffer  from  erudition,"  is  a 
characteristic  mot  of  his),  his  life-philosophy  is  as 
far  removed  from  the  hysterical  effusions  of  the 
pseudo-mystic  and  hedonist  as  from  the  coarse- 
grained, obtuse  realism  of  the  street-corner 
pragmatist.  Bringing  to  his  problem  not  only 
the  passion  of  a  pure  and  youthful  soul  and  a 
boldly  experimental  nature,  but  also  a  severely 
trained  intellect,  a  deeply  informed  philosophical 
spirit,  and  a  power  of  wide-glancing  appreciation 
and  penetrative  insight,  his  work  can  take  its 
place  beside  the  maturest  and  noblest  philosophies 
intellectualism  has  given  us,  and  must  rank  as 
path-breaking  both  for  the  perplexed  public 
mind  and  for  the  aristocracy  of  thinkers.  If,  on 
the  one  hand,  it  lies  so  close  to  the  great  universal 
facts  of  life  that  humble  folk  will  see  in  it  nothing 
new,  but  merely  a  re-statement  of  the  teaching  of 
Jesus,  students  will  find  in  this  philosophical 
restatement  of  Christ's  teaching  unflagging  sources 
of  inspirational  and  creative  thought  for  their  own 
work.  To  Christian  thought  especially  his  luminous 
and  weighty  critique  of  the  present  form  of 
Christianity  will  come  with  salutary  force,  not  so 
much  as  a  call  to  discard  the  old,  but  rather  as 
a  reminder  that  in  every  age  the  Church  which 
identifies  the  Gospel  with  its  own  appropriation 
of  it  has  already  lost  it. 

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Ill 

Rudolf  Eucken  and  Historical 
Christianity 


CHAPTER    III 

Rudolf  Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

Eucken's  importance  for  Christian  thought — His 
affinities  with  Evangelical  convictions — "  The  Truth 
of  Religion,"  its  "inspirational"  character — His 
ignoring  of  the  mystical  immediacies  :  prayer,  worship, 
contemplation — His  stress  on  intuition  rather  than  on 
revelation — "  Can  we  still  be  Christians  ?  "  :  a  plea  for 
an  undogmatic  Christianity — His  penetrative  diagnosis 
of  the  present  situation — His  reverent  appreciation  of 
Jesus — Sidelights  on  German  orthodoxy— Critique  and 
rejection  of  ecclesiastical  dogma — Jesus  a  creative,  but 
not  a  normative,  historic  individuality — Eucken's  approach 
to  the  problem  not  experimental  enough — The  apostolic 
experience  behind  dogma  :  can  the  "  human  "  Jesus  bear 
its  weight  ? — The  microcosm  of  the  life  interpreted  by  the 
macrocosm  of  its  influence — "  Slowly  the  biography  of  the 
Christ  is  writ  " — Eucken's  attitude  towards  miracles — 
His  interest  in  Redemption  too  speculative. 


CHAPTER    III 

Rudolf   Eucken   and    Historical 
Christianity 

Eucken  stands  before  us  to-day  as  perhaps  the 
greatest  thinker  of  our  age  and  the  protagonist 
of  a  new  idealism  which  satisfies  our  demand  for 
moral  reality  as  no  idealistic  philosophy  has  ever 
done,  and  as  the  teacher  who  has  most  fully  and 
boldly  developed  the  religious  implications  of 
ethical  idealism.  His  philosophy  of  life  is  an 
insistence  upon  the  supremacy  of  the  spiritual. 
His  defence  of  freedom  is  a  doctrine  of  spiritual 
liberty  rooted  in  the  saving  initiative  of  God  and 
our  dependence  on  Him.  His  vindication  of 
personality  is  the  rescue  of  the  free,  God-centred 
personality  from  the  thraldom  of  a  self-centred 
individuality.  His  Activism  stands  not  only  for 
the  kingdom  of  God  in  the  making  to  be  progress- 
ively realised  through  our  action,  but  also  for  that 
complete  renewal  of  the  given  without  which  such 
realisation  is  impossible.  Again  and  again  we 
find  in  his  pages  an  enthusiastic  pre-occupation 
with  specifically  Christian  categories  which 
rebukes    the    fashionable    reluctance    of    certain 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

Christian  teachers  whose  apologetic  timidity 
tempts  them  to  speak  the  language  of  Grace  with 
the  accent  of  Evolution,  and  to  make  of  the 
soul's  supreme  experience  a  mere  tag  of  theology 
in  their  anxiety  to  conciliate  the  half-cultured. 
Again  and  again  we  are  carried  away  by  Eucken's 
enthusiastic  valuation  of  Christian  elements,  his 
unreserved  adherence  to  the  principle  of  redemp- 
tion, his  reverent  and  noble  tribute  to  the 
uniqueness  of  Jesus  for  the  spiritual  life.  One 
need  not  go  to  the  three  volumes  which  enshrine 
his  specific  philosophy  of  religion — the  "  Main 
Problems,"  *'  The  Truth  of  Religion,"  and  "  Can 
we  still  be  Christians  ?  " — to  realise  his  deep 
affinities  with  the  central  spirit  of  Christianity; 
scattered  throughout  his  work  are  abundant  and 
revealing  glimpses  of  the  Christian  soul  that 
animates  the  body  of  his  philosophy.  It  could  not 
well  be  otherwise.  While  the  artificial  limitations 
of  an  intellectualist  system  may  exclude  religion, 
a  philosophy  of  life  must  always  in  some  sense  be 
a  philosophy  of  faith.  In  Eucken  the  religious 
implications  of  such  a  philosophy  are  acknow- 
ledged from  the  first.  To  play  on  the  titles  of 
two  of  his  books,  "  the  struggle  for  a  concrete 
spiritual  experience  "  implies  "  the  truth  of 
religion  "  as  its  only  explanation.  Further  still, 
such  religion  must  be  a  religion  of  redemption  in 
the  Christian,  as  distinct  from  the  Buddhist, 
sense  ;  for,  as  we  have  seen,  there  can  ultimately 
be   no  genuine  struggle  or  negative   movement 

88 


Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

unless  the  oppositions  of  life  are  overcome,  not 
intellectually  through  a  clearer  understanding, 
but  actively  through  an  experience  of  salvation — 
"  a  redeeming  and  renewing  spiritual  activity 
which  is  a  salvation  straight  from  God." 

Eucken  is  coming  to  be  more  and  more  generally 
regarded  as  the  teacher,  who,  by  virtue  of  his 
speculative  endowment,  sympathetic  insight  and 
spiritual  passion,  is  destined  to  play  a  leading 
part  in  commending  Christianity  to  the  modern 
mind — blazing  a  trail  to  God  across  the  tangled 
wild  of  fermenting  counter-tendencies  for  the 
baffled  spirit  that  can  find  refuge  neither  in 
traditional  orthodoxy  nor  in  our  soulless  rational- 
istic culture.  He  has  a  unique  knowledge  both 
of  the  complex  and  involved  problems  of  modern 
culture  and  of  the  central  questions  of  religion  and 
life.  His  knowledge  of  theology,  especially  of 
the  development  of  dogma,  is  sound,  and  his 
attitude  towards  it  entirely  respectful.  He 
combines  a  thoroughly  modern  sense  of  things 
with  complete  freedom  from  slavery  to  the 
intellectual  fashion  of  the  hour.  His  compre- 
hensive historical  scholarship  has  given  a  wide 
sanity  and  generosity  to  his  judgment,  without 
putting  the  drag  of  a  timid  caution  upon  his 
thought.  No  wonder  a  whole  generation  of 
young  thinkers  looks  to  him  as  a  path-breaker  for 
the  religion  of  the  future. 

Added  to  this,  the  positively  Christian  mind 
finds  in  him  an  appreciation  of  Christianity  which 

89 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

has  nothing  in  common  with  the  patronising 
attitude  of  the  old  rationalism.  And  this 
appreciation  does  not  stop  short  at  the  point  where 
Christianity  lifts  a  challenging  head  above  the 
general  stream  of  spiritual  life  and  God-ward 
aspiration.  Eucken  has  the  most  vital  affinity 
with  those  aspects  of  Christianity  which  for  the 
orthodox  theologian  centre  in  the  Cross  of  Christ. 
He  recognises,  as  few  modern  thinkers  do,  the 
reality  and  gravity  of  the  problem  of  Divine  love 
and  justice  which  lies  behind  all  theories  of  the 
Atonement.  Sin — not  merely  the  blind  and 
pathetic  blundering  of  lost  children,  but  the 
deliberate  and  malignant  wickedness  of  rebels 
against  the  moral  order — is  to  him  a  reality  which 
has  bitten  too  deeply  into  his  consciousness  to 
allow  him  for  one  moment  to  deride  or  caricature 
the  conception  of  a  crucified  Redeemer.  What- 
ever his  rejections  and  denials  may  be,  they  are 
not  the  flat  rationalisations  of  a  mind  alien  to  the 
genius  of  the  thing  it  superciliously  toys  with,  but 
they  proceed  from  the  very  profundity  of  a  religious 
experience  which  is  passionately  jealous  to  keep 
the  sources  of  its  life  pure  and  open  for  other 
souls. 

The  book  which  embodies  his  philosophy  of 
religion  in  its  most  complete  form  is  the  excellently 
translated  "  Truth  of  Religion."  The  somewhat 
involved  and  reiterative  style  in  which  it  is  written 
tends  to  obscure  its  strength  and  originality,  just 
as  an  excessively  concrete  and  limpid  style  often 

90 


Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

hides  the  difficulty  and  depth  of  the  subject,  and 
with  still  more  fatal  result.  It  must  not  be 
forgotten  that  Eucken,  like  Fichte,  is  essentially 
a  prophet,  and  reiteration  belongs  to  the  genius 
of  the  prophet,  and  may  be  regarded  as  his 
limitation  or  his  virtue  according  to  one's  point 
of  view.  The  lecturer  can  afford  to  choose  and 
prune  his  words  with  an  eye  to  the  greatest 
possible  effectiveness  ;  the  prophet,  in  the  grip 
of  an  inspiration  and  a  passion,  often  dare  not 
stop  to  work  at  verbal  craftsmanship.  Even 
Eucken's  most  deliberate  and  speculative  work 
is  carried  and  stressed  by  an  inspiration  and  a 
passion,  and  the  peculiar  abstractness  and 
involutions  of  the  Teutonic  style  do  not  make  for 
clearness  and  vividness  under  such  pressure. 

In  "  The  Truth  of  Religion  "  we  have  the  problem 
presented  on  broad  and  speculative  lines  ;  it  is 
rather  in  his  latest  book,  "  Can  we  still  be 
Christians  ?  "  that  Eucken's  attitude  towards 
historical  and  dogmatic  Christianity  finds  its 
concentrated  and  characteristic  expression,  and 
it  is  therefore  on  this  last  that  we  shall  attempt 
to  found  our  estimate  of  his  position.  This  does 
not,  of  course,  imply  that  the  larger  work  is  not 
essential  to  a  right  understanding  of  Eucken's 
theological  views ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  funda- 
mental to  such  an  understanding,  and,  indeed, 
includes  the  contents  of  the  much  smaller  and 
far  more  popular  volume  in  its  range.  One's 
sole  reason  for  choosing  the  latter  is  the  more 

9i 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

concrete  and  challenging  form  in  which  it  presents 
the  issue. 

Turning  first,  and  somewhat  briefly,  to  "The 
Truth  of  Religion,"  we  see  in  it  all  the  funda- 
mentals of  Eucken's  philosophy  of  life,  recapitu- 
lated in  relation  to  the  main  issue.  In  common 
with  other  prominent  thinkers,  he  conceives 
religion  as  rooted  not  in  belief,  but  in  life.  Man's 
discontent  with  the  "  here  and  now  "  world  urges 
him  into  a  struggle  for  a  concrete  spiritual 
experience — "  a  quest  for  a  More  which  lies  on  a 
coast  beyond  the  natural  province,"  and  a 
hopeless  quest,  if  that  "  More  "  be  sought  within 
the  circle  of  the  purely  human.  In  religion, 
however,  man  finds  that  attachment  to  an  over- 
world  beyond  himself  which  makes  for  inward 
elevation  and  renewal.  As  we  have  seen,  Eucken 
distinguishes  between  two  types  of  religion — the 
universal  and  the  characteristic.  Viewed  briefly 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  above  definition, 
universal  religion  is  religion  as  spirituality  :  a 
new  mood,  not  a  new  world.  "  We  have  in  a 
spiritual  life  a  new  stage  within  the  world  ;  but 
we  have  not  yet  a  new  world;  we  have  won  no 
over-world  as  yet."  Or,  to  put  it  from  a  different 
angle,  universal  religion  has  no  personal  God  ;  it 
has  only  a  diffused  and  pervasive  spiritual  life, 
which,  ever  at  war  with  the  natural,  conquers  only 
its  outworks,  not  its  citadel,  because  pitted  against 
a  world  which  it  cannot  finally  subdue  for  lack 
of  a  point  of   vantage  above  it.     Characteristic 

92 


Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

religion  rises  from  a  diffused  and  militant  spiritual 
life  to  a  personal  Omnipresence  in  whom  that  life 
is  supremely  real,  and  who  penetrates  the  spirit  of 
man  with  converting  and  redeeming  effect, 
translating  it  into  an  inward  kingdom.  Thus  we 
proceed  from  the  colourless  conception  of  deity 
to  that  of  a  living  and  personal  God,  whose  chief 
attribute  is  self-communicating  and  redeeming 
love.  And  it  should  be  noted  that  though  the 
relation  of  the  human  spirit  to  God  is  conceived 
as  an  inward  immediacy,  Eucken,  in  sharp  contrast 
to  some  of  his  school,  insists  on  the  supreme 
importance  of  an  organised  Church.  He  demands 
a  Christian  koivwvta,  a  holy  assembly,  and 
recognises  that  if  such  an  assembly  is  not  to  sink 
to  the  level  of  a  debating  society,  it  must  demand 
certain  fundamental  convictions  from  its  leaders 
and  teachers.  While  his  critique  of  the  existing 
Churches  does  not  err  on  the  side  of  leniency,  he 
recognises  their  invaluable  service  as  rallying 
points  and  ministrants  of  the  spiritual  life. 

The  final  section  is  devoted  to  a  powerful 
vindication  of  the  eternal  element  in  historic 
Christianity.  For  Eucken  Christianity  is  not 
one  religion  among  others,  but  the  religion  of 
religions,  the  most  perfect  embodiment  of  the 
absolute  religion.  It  offers  us  the  completest 
initiation  into  the  realities  of  the  spiritual  life. 
It  was  "  the  first  to  bring  the  pure  inwardness  of 
the  soul  to  a  clearer  expression,  but  it  has  also, 
through  the  linking  of  the  human  to  a  Divine  and 

93 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

Eternal  order,  raised  life  beyond  all  the  petty 
human."  Meeting  the  dark  problems  of  life 
crucially  and  actively  at  their  central  depths,  it 
does  not  stop  short  at  deliverance  from  evil,  but 
translates  men  into  a  new  world  in  which  the 
supremacy  of  God  implies  and  demands  the  free, 
self-contained  activity  of  the  God-penetrated 
personality.  It  has,  in  short,  created  a  new  type 
of  life,  poured  a  new  strength  and  heroism  into 
mankind,  initiated  a  new  movement  in  the  soul, 
giving  a  history  and  a  value  to  the  poorest  and 
simplest.  Viewing  the  traditional  dogmatic  form 
of  Christianity  as  superseded  and  out  of  consonance 
with  the  legitimate  ideals  and  thought  of  the  age, 
he  pleads  for  a  liberalism  which,  while  discarding 
outworn  dogma,  will  delve  all  the  deeper  into  the 
divine  and  eternal  substance  of  Christianity,  and, 
while  demanding  a  re-statement  germane  to  the 
demands  of  the  time,  will  wage  war  against  its 
superficial,  relaxed  and  unspiritual  temper. 
Throughout  his  critique  of  the  present  form  of 
Christianity,  Eucken  works  not  in  the  interests 
of  a  lazy  and  shallow  rationalism,  but  for  a 
living  faith. 

Postponing  the  examination  of  Eucken's 
dogmatic  rejections,  which  can  be  discussed  more 
conveniently  in  connection  with  his  latest  book, 
we  notice  one  significant  omission  in  "  The  Truth 
of  Religion."  In  vain  do  we  search  it  for  a 
philosophical  interpretation  of  prayer,  adoration, 
contemplation,  ecstasy  or  worship  ;    throughout 

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Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

the  whole  of  his  work,  indeed,  there  is  a  taciturnity 
about  these  spiritual  intimacies  which  verges  on 
suspicion  of  them.  Philosophically  this  lacuna  may 
be  explained,  as  has  been  hinted  before,  by  his 
characteristic  distrust  of  psychology  (largely  due, 
no  doubt,  to  the  physiological  laboratory  psych- 
ology so  much  in  vogue  in  Germany  and  so  brutally 
naturalistic  in  its  general  trend),  to  his  equally 
comprehensible  revulsion  from  intellectualism, 
and  to  his  predominantly  activistic  point  of  view. 
He  barely  admits  that  behind  the  action  or 
"  work  "  in  which  we  express  our  union  with  God 
there  is  a  personal  spiritual  experience — a  central 
attitude  of  the  soul  inly  at  one  with  itself  and  in 
communion  with  God,  and  that  this  relation  is  a 
fundamental  and  controlling  factor  in  the  self- 
realisation  of  the  personality  through  action.  But 
one  suspects  that  the  fundamental  reason  for 
this  omission  is  not  to  be  sought  in  certain 
philosophical  characteristics,  but  rather  in  an 
approach  to  the  whole  problem  of  religion 
which,  in  spite  of  the  vitalistic  philosophy  that 
animates  it,  is  speculative  rather  than  experi- 
mental. (The  same  stricture  applies  to  Eucken's 
treatment  of  Christology,  as  I  hope  to  show 
further  on.) 

Confining  ourselves  to  prayer,  there  is  no  more 
universal  characteristic  of  the  religious  life  of  the 
race  than  the  spontaneity  and  urgency  with  which 
it  rises  from  the  most  widely  divergent  and 
intellectually  antipodean  natures,  and  the  stability 

95 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

and  strength  of  soul  derived  from  this  form  of 
communion  with  the  Unseen  by  men  of  every 
type  and  temperament.  To  dismiss  the  univer- 
sality of  the  prayer-instinct  as  the  survival  of 
ancestral  superstition  and  a  crude  conception  of 
the  Deity  is  quite  inadequate,  however  much  this 
cause  may  contribute  to  it.  Even  the  selfish  and 
superstitious  prayer  of  the  man  of  sensual  mind 
and  evil  life  in  hours  of  danger  or  calamity  cannot 
be  thus  dismissed,  for  if  ancestral  superstition 
resurges  at  such  times,  it  is  also  true  that  such 
crises  reveal  the  naked  soul  as  nothing  else  can. 
It  is  open  to  the  superficial  observer  to  say  that 
such  prayer  is  but  the  hysterical  mood  of  a  coward 
soul  whose  e very-day  life  is  its  real  "  habit  "  ; 
but  is  it  not  truer  to  say  that  the  lightning  flash 
of  disaster  across  the  dark  waste  of  such  a  soul 
reveals  its  most  central  and  truly  "  natural " 
bent — the  sense  of  dependence  upon  God  and  the 
craving  to  have  speech  with  Him  ?  Again,  the 
power  and  heroism  of  soul  with  which  the  habit  of 
prayer  invests  even  broken,  ungifted  and  mediocre 
natures  is  a  fact  which  must  be  taken  into  the  most 
serious  consideration  by  a  philosophy  of  life.  In 
a  fine  and  penetrative  chapter  on  Prayer,  Dr. 
Eleanor  Harris  Rowland  pleads  convincingly  for 
a  more  experimental  standpoint.  We  need  great 
Pray-ers,  she  urges,  and  such  will  always  be 
marked  personalities  with  a  certain  force  and 
efficiency  of  character  that  owe  little  to  natural 
endowment.     "  I  have  known  people,"  she  says, 

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Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

"  who  were  raised  from  commonplaceness  by 
apparently  no  other  characteristic  than  this. 
They  were  not  gifted,  they  were  not  subtle,  they 
were  not  noted  for  their  mental  capacity,  but 
there  emanated  from  them  a  certain  force  which 
is  conspicuously  lacking  in  many  more  intel- 
lectual men."  And  these  words  of  a  Christian 
apologist  are  echoed  by  many  who  stand  completely 
outside  religion.  Nothing  is  deeper  in  the  spirit 
of  man,  however  far  it  may  have  wandered  from 
its  centre,  than  the  conviction  that  the  mysterious 
and  profound  life  which  lives  behind  the  brain, 
lives  by  prayer,  and  that  in  entering  the  world  of 
prayer  we  enter  the  world  of  reality.  These  are 
fundamental  facts  of  our  religious  nature  which 
challenge  philosophy.  No  satisfactory  rationale 
of  prayer  has  ever  been  given,  yet  the  most  fumbling 
attempt  is  surely  better  than  to  drop  it  out  of  our 
analysis  of  the  spiritual  life.  Even  the  ideal  of 
contemplative  monasticism  deserves  no  such 
relegation  to  spiritual  pusillanimity  and  decrepi- 
tude as  Eucken  and  his  school  are  inclined  to 
mete  out  to  it.  Behind  it  there  lies  the  deathless 
conviction  that  prayer  is  the  most  heroic  act  of 
the  soul,  just  as  the  word,  the  look,  the  touch,  by 
which  love  declares  and  commits  itself  may  be  not 
only  a  greater  agony,  a  bloodier  passion,  but  a 
more  intensely  moral  act  than  the  whole  life  of 
sacrifice  and  service  that  flows  out  of  it.  There 
is  such  a  thing  as  elect  souls,  here  and  there,  being 
called  apart  from  the  life  of  action  and  inter- 

97 

7 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

course  to  a  life  of  prayer  and  contemplation  as 
surely  vicarious  and  altruistic  as  a  life  of  philan- 
thropy ;  for  these  are  they  who  can  say,  "  For 
their  sakes  I  sanctify  myself."  It  is  only  when 
such  a  vocation  is  conventionalised  into  monastic 
orders  that  it  becomes  morbid  and  mischievous. 
At  any  rate,  the  tacit  passing-by  of  spiritual 
activities  which  through  all  the  religious  history 
of  man  have  been  the  clearest  expression  of  his 
spiritual  life  vitiates  the  claim  of  an  otherwise 
noble  and  comprehensive  treatment  to  be  a 
complete  philosophy  of  religion.  The  root  of 
this  neglect  of  the  individual  immediacy  of  the 
soul  in  communion  with  God  may  be  traced  to 
Eucken's  fundamental  view  which  connects,  and 
all  but  identifies,  religion  with  the  spiritual  life 
in  its  universal  sense.  For  Eucken,  religion  does 
not  begin  in  the  individual's  awakening  to 
contact  with  a  God  conceived  as  a  personal 
Saviour  of  the  individual  life,  but  in  the  indi- 
vidual's becoming  conscious  of  the  absolute 
spiritual  life  and  identifying  himself  with  it.  Indeed, 
one  is  not  sure  that  Eucken  would  not  describe 
the  Gospel  type  of  individual  realisation  and 
intimacy  as  belonging  to  that  circle  of  the  "  pettily 
human  "  which  the  individual  must  leave  behind 
in  order  to  become  a  personality.  This  aspect  of 
Eucken's  position  may  be  supplemented  by  a 
personal  utterance  made  to  the  present  writer, 
in  the  course  of  an  interview  published  in  the 
Australian  Christian  World,  July  21,  1911  : — 

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Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

The  first  step  towards  the  spiritual  life  is,  generally 
speaking,  the  realisation  of  a  universal  life  all-inclusive 
and  higher  than  the  life  of  the  individual  or  the  group  ;  in 
other  words,  the  dawning  of  a  cosmic  consciousness.  But 
this,  in  itself,  does  not  assure  spiritual  victory  and  inward 
reconciliation  ;  on  the  contrary,  it  introduces  fresh  elements 
of  conflict.  It  still  leaves  man  a  passive  subject,  a  mere 
spectator,  a  pawn  in  the  game.  The  question  that  presses 
against  his  soul  is,  "  Does  this  great  Whole — this  stream  of 
which  I  am  a  passive  tributary — concern  itself  about  me  ?  " 
It  is  only  when  the  man  realises  this  unity,  this  "  All,"  as 
penetrating  human  life  to  its  depths  of  sorrow,  pain  and 
guilt ;  when  he  experiences  it  not  only  as  doing  something 
"to"  him,  but  as  working  "in"  him,  that  he  can  rise  above 
contradiction  and  conflict.  From  the  moment  in  which 
he  becomes  an  active  agent,  translating  happenings  and 
events  from  necessity  into  freedom,  taking  the  world- 
problem  upon  himself,  engaging  in  a  brave  struggle  for 
spiritual  existence,  and  claiming  his  share  in  the  great 
life-task,  he  becomes  a  spiritual  personality. 

There  is  yet  another  sense  in  which  this  great 
and  inspiring  volume  leaves  a  cloud  of  misgiving 
upon  the  spirit.  It  insists  with  telling  force  that 
religion  must  bring  us  a  new  world,  not  merely 
do  something  for  the  old,  and  that  this  new  world 
comes  to  us  not  by  pervasion,  but  by  invasion,  as 
a  call  to  decision,  surrender,  and  free  co-operation. 
But  while  Eucken  impresses  us  with  the  reality  of 
this  new  world,  and  with  its  power  of  attraction, 
he  leaves  the  greater  question  of  its  authority,  its 
right  to  exact  our  choice  and  obedience,  untouched. 
Obeying  the  call  of  our  deeper  and  finer  intuition, 
we  commit  ourselves  to  it,  and  take  up  the 
struggle  with  our  lower  experience.     We  take  the 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

heroic  plunge.  We  have  the  will  to  believe. 
Have  we  also  the  right  to  believe  ?  If  not, 
neither  our  will  nor  our  intuition  can  ultimately 
sustain  that  faith  in  an  over-world,  and  in  a 
loving,  active  Omnipresence,  which,  thought  out 
to  its  last  consequence,  is  as  great  a  paradox,  as 
impassable  an  "  offence,"  as  the  dogma  of  the 
God-man,  or  of  the  atoning  death  on  the  Cross. 
Not  only  is  it  brutally  contradicted  by  the  world, 
but  the  very  intuition  which  embraces  it  has  to 
search  painfully  for  an  inward  justification  of  it, 
and  only  finds  it  in  rare  exalted  moments  of 
spiritual  clairvoyance.  The  art  of  verified  and 
sustained  spiritual  intuition  is  far  too  long  for 
this  brief  life  of  ours.  Unless  the  over-world  is 
present  with  us,  and  in  us,  not  only  as  an  influence, 
an  impression,  a  call,  a  pressure,  but  as  a  moral 
authority,  objective  though  not  external,  with  the 
right  to  search,  to  exact,  to  break,  we  are  still 
left  in  our  experience  to  the  very  subjectivism 
from  which  our  philosophy  of  life  wants  to 
deliver  us. 

And  this  authority  must  prove  itself  in  creative 
action.  It  must  not  merely  demand,  but  give  ; 
it  must  ultimately  owe  its  sovereignty  over  us  to 
its  own  power,  not  to  our  surrender.  It  must 
reveal  itself  in  power,  vindicate  itself  in  action, 
not  merely  unroll  itself  to  our  progressive  vision 
and  justify  the  venture  of  our  intuition.  That 
such  authority  and  creative  power  can  only  come 
to  us  effectively  in  the  supreme   moral  act   in 

ioo 


Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

history  of  an  infinite  Personality  is  the  conviction 
of  positive  theology  and  evangelical  faith.  But  to 
this  we  must  return  later. 

Eucken's  attitude  to  dogmatic  Christianity  has 
found  suggestive  and  sympathetic  expression  in 
"  Can  we  still  be  Christians  ?  "  In  this  volume 
he  begins  with  a  very  lucid  and  penetrative 
discussion  of  the  meaning  and  objective  of 
Christianity,  of  those  elements  in  the  time- 
spirit  which  oppose  and  militate  against  the 
Christian  view  of  God  and  the  world,  and  of  those 
elements  in  Christianity  which  would  make  its 
final  rejection  by  our  time  a  felo  de  se.  The  next 
section  covers  familiar  ground  in  recapitulating 
the  fundamental  function  of  religion  in  realising 
the  life  of  the  spirit  and  its  progress  from  universal 
to  characteristic  religion.  In  the  final  and  con- 
structive section  he  deals  with  the  right  of 
Christianity  and  its  power  to  express  itself  in  new 
forms,  with  the  impossibility  of  effecting  such  a 
renewal  within  the  Churches  as  they  at  present 
exist,  and  with  the  necessity  of  a  new  Christianity 
for  our  age.  "  We  have  asked,"  he  says  in  closing, 
"  whether  we  of  to-day  can  still  be  Christians. 
Our  answer  is  not  only  that  we  can  be,  but  that 
we  must.  But  we  can  only  be  Christians  if 
Christianity  is  recognised  as  a  world-historical 
movement  still  in  flux,  if  it  is  shaken  out  of  its 
ecclesiastical  vitrification  and  placed  upon  a 
broader  basis.  In  this  lies  the  task  of  our  time 
and  the  hope  of  the  future  "  (p.  236). 

101 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

Broadly  speaking,  Eucken  puts  in  a  plea  for  an 
undogmatic  Christianity;  not  however,  as  need 
hardly  be  pointed  out,  in  the  sense  of  vulgar 
rationalism.  For  him;  Christianity  does  not  bring 
to  man  mere  teaching  and  theories,  not  merely  a 
world-view,  but  a  great  realm  of  facts  standing 
above  all  argument,  caprice  or  mood.  As  the 
eternal  substance  of  Christianity  he  recognises  its 
encompassment  of  the  whole  of  human  life  which 
it  translates  into  a  new  world,  its  effectual 
assertion  of  the  supremacy  of  the  spiritual,  and 
its  redemptive  character.  Christianity  is  the 
religion  of  redemption,  and  redemption  not  in  the 
intellectual  sense  of  the  Hindoo  religions,  but  in  a 
deeply  ethical  sense.  Its  task  is  not  to  open 
men's  eyes  to  an  ideal  world,  to  whose  perfec- 
tion the  illusion  of  their  senses  had  blinded 
them,  but  to  call  them  to  a  struggle  against  evil 
in  which  the  saving  activity  of  God  carries  their 
action  and  gives  their  will  for  good  a  fastness  in  a 
world  above  their  feeble  capacity  and  striving. 

There  are  many  points  in  Eucken's  valuation  of 
Christianity  which  bring  him  into  profound 
sympathy  with  the  great  evangelical  doctrines. 
His  practical  and  passionate  interest  in  redemption 
is  the  chief  of  these  ;  his  deep  diagnosis  of  the 
present  situation  is  another.  Unlike  the  juggling 
optimism  of  a  certain  class  of  "  Vermittlungs- 
theologen,"  he  does  not  seek  to  dull  the  edge  or 
shallow  the  depth  of  the  collision  between 
Christianity  and  the  age.   Neither  does  he  conceive 

102 


Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

the  Christianity  of  the  future  as  merely  a  Christ  - 
ianity  d  la  mode.  While  yielding  to  the  legitimate 
demands  of  the  age,  and  grappling  sympathetically 
and  fearlessly  with  its  problems  and  entangle- 
ments, such  a  Christianity  must  stand  above  the 
time  and  make  relentless  war  upon  its  superficial, 
petty  and  unspiritual  tendencies,  its  empty, 
godless  culture,  its  brutalising  comfort  and  ease, 
its  unscrupulous  and  heartless  civilisation.  What- 
ever we  may  think  of  Eucken's  religious  eirenikon, 
there  is  nothing  equivocal  in  his  attempt  at 
reconciliation,  and  the  minister  of  religion 
especially  will  find  it  at  once  a  lesson  and  an 
inspiration.  His  attitude  towards  the  person  of 
Jesus  is  one  of  profound  and  reverent  appreciation. 
In  "  The  Problem  of  Human  Life  "  no  less  than 
a  third  of  the  whole  volume  is  devoted  to  the  great 
Teacher  and  Initiator  of  a  new  life.  And  nowhere 
does  he  join  beauty  to  strength  so  harmoniously 
as  in  his  word-picture  of  Jesus — a  tribute  in  which 
the  poet  that  is  in  every  great  thinker  unites  with 
the  philosopher  in  a  harmony  of  peculiar  charm. 
Seldom  has  the  perfect  man  and  religious  genius 
been  limned  with  so  persuasive  a  combination  of 
strenuous  thought  and  gracious  word ;  we  seek 
in  vain  either  for  the  vapid  sentiment  of  a  merely 
romantic  admiration,  or  for  the  desiccating 
touch  of  unemotional  enquiry.  Nor  does  he 
regard  Jesus  as  a  "  mere  man,"  to  use  a  convenient 
phrase,  but  rather  as  a  fontal  personality.  We  not 
only  see  light  in  His  light  ;    we  kindle  our  light 

103 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

at  His.  "  He  who  makes  merely  a  normal  man 
of  Jesus,"  he  says,  "  can  never  do  justice  to  His 
greatness.  Modern  historical  research  protests 
against  such  a  flat  rationalisation,  and  insists 
upon  a  recognition  of  the  undiluted  reality."  In 
another  passage  he  speaks  of  the  unique  position 
which  Jesus  occupied,  not  only  in  the  believing 
hearts  of  His  followers,  but  in  His  own  conscious- 
ness. There  is  indeed  a  sense  in  which  Eucken's 
thought  may  be  regarded  as  Christocentric  : — 

"In  as  far  as  the  image  of  Jesus  remained  present  to  the 
Christian  consciousness,  Christianity  had  a  sure  guardian 
angel  against  the  danger  of  being  submerged  in  the  pettily 
human  affairs  and  the  sluggish  routine  of  the  everyday  life 
around  it,  and  also  against  the  petrifaction  and  shallowing 
of  its  own  life,  against  the  rationalism  of  dogma  and  the 
Pharisaism  of  complacency  in  good  works.  It  had 
within  it  a  power  to  recall  it  from  all  complexity  of  its 
historical  development  to  the  simplicity  of  the  purely 
human  and  a  bond  preventing  its  threatened  decomposition 
into  sects  and  parties.  Thus  there  has  ever  been  within 
Christianity  the  movement  back  to  Jesus,  and  a  constant 
renewal  from  this  source."1  And  again  :  "  A  human  life 
taking  the  lowliest  and  simplest  of  courses  in  a  remote  corner 
of  the  earth,  little  heeded  by  its  contemporaries,  and  brutally 
destroyed  after  a  short  fruition.  And  yet  this  life  through 
the  power  of  the  Spirit  that  filled  it  has  radically  transformed 
our  human  values.  He  has  rendered  inadequate  everything 
that  had  hitherto  seemed  to  bring  complete  happiness  ;  He 
has  set  bounds  to  all  merely  natural  culture  ;  He  has  not 
only  branded  all  abandonment  to  mere  enjoyment  as 
frivolity ;  He  has  reduced  all  human  life  as  hitherto 
understood    to    the    category    of    mere    '  world.'     Such 

*  "  Die  Lebensanschauungen  der  Grossen  Denker,"  p.  168. 
104 


Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

valuations  grip  us  and  refuse  to  leave  us,  even  after  we  have 
abandoned  all  ecclesiastical  dogmas  and  practices.  So  this 
life  sits  in  continuous  judgment  over  the  world.'" 

To  a  Christ  of  dogma  whom  the  mind  of  to-day 
cannot  accept  without  supreme  self-betrayal  and 
who  must  be  deleted  from  Christianity  if  it 
is  to  command  the  loyalty  of  our  age,  Eucken, 
after  the  manner  of  modern  liberalism,2  opposes 
the  Jesus  of  the  Gospels,  or  rather  behind  the 
Gospels.  His  definition  of  gvangelical  doctrine, 
as  found  in  "  Can  we  still  be  Christians  ?  "  casts  a 
revealing  and  almost  lurid  light  upon  the  condition 
of  orthodoxy  in  Germany.  Over  and  over  again 
his  statement  of  the  doctrines  accepted  as  orthodox 
strikes  one  with  something  like  dismay.  If 
these  are  indeed  the  forms  in  which  these  doctrines 
are  taught  to  pious  souls  in  Germany,  then  the 
sooner  some  merciful  iconoclast  shivers  them  to 
atoms  the  better.  Over  and  over  again  we  find 
the  generally  accepted  doctrine  of  the  Atonement 
defined  as  the  appeasing  of  a  Divine  wrath  which 

1  "  Die  Lebensanschauungen  der  Grossen  Denker,"  p.  266. 

*  It  should  be  noted,  however,  that  Eucken  has  always 
maintained  an  attitude  of  complete  independence  towards 
organised  "  liberal  "  Christianity.  He  is,  for  instance,  neither 
a  member  of  the  notorious  Protestantenverein ,  nor  did  he 
lend  his  name  to  the  movement  connected  with  the  name  of 
Pastor  Jatho  of  Cologne.  In  this  connection  a  remark  of  his  to 
the  present  writer  may  not  ineptly  be  quoted  : — "  Much  of  the 
present-day  liberalism  suffers  from  superficiality.  Its  sense  of 
the  dark  things  of  life,  especially  of  the  problem  of  guilt,  is 
frequently  too  trivial  to  cope  with  the  situation  ;  and,  moreover, 
it  lacks  the  self-sacrificing  spirit  which  marked  the  old  orthodoxy;" 
(From  an  interview  with  Eucken  in  the  Australian  Christian 
World.) 

105 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

refuses  to  be  placated  by  anything  less  than  the 
blood  of  the  Son  ;  and  once  more  as  the  removal 
of  God's  unwillingness  to  show  a  gracious  face 
until  He  had  seen  the  blood.  That  a  barbarism 
which  any  intelligent  child  could  meet  with  the 
story  of  a  God  who  commended  His  love  toward 
us  in  that  while  we  were  yet  sinners  Christ  died, 
should  still  hold  ground  in  any  country  except 
among  obscure  and  illiterate  sects  is  one  of  our 
modern  miracles.  «Eucken's  definition  of  the 
orthodox  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  reveals  an 
equally  coarse  and  obscurantist  conception — a 
mixture  of  superseded  metaphysic  and  of  a  very 
unlovely  form  of  implicit  materialism.  That  the 
doctrine  of  the  "  two  natures  "  in  Christ  should 
still  be  taught  in  Germany  in  its  crudest  and  most 
vicious  form  is  almost  impossible  to  credit,  and 
one  confesses  that  the  whole  condition  of  German 
orthodoxy,  as  indirectly  reflected  in  this  book, 
fills  one  with  an  amazement  which  would  be 
decidedly  incredulous,  were  it  not  that  examples 
of  it  reached  one  every  now  and  then  from  the 
conservative  side.  For  instance,  in  a  recently 
published  pamphlet  on  "  Eucken 's  Christianity" 
by  a  German  ultra-orthodox  theologian,  Dr. 
Ludwig  von  Gerdtell,  we  find  it  seriously  set 
forth  for  present-day  readers  that  faith  in  Christ's 
supreme  act  on  the  Cross  is  indissolubly  con- 
nected with  a  world-view  which  includes  a  belief 
in  angels,  demons,  and  a  supreme  devil,  and  that 
any  attempt  at  progressive  doctrinal  development 

106 


Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

rests  upon  a  complete  misapprehension  and 
involves  a  logical  contradiction.  This  example 
of  concentrated  obscurantism  is  preceded  by  a 
long  string  of  enthusiastic  critiques  by  conserva- 
tive leaders  and  organs,  one  of  which  declares 
that  it  contains  "  the  redeeming  word  "  for  many 
a  tortured,  thinking  soul.  Henceforth  we  may 
excuse  Isaac  Watts  for  asking  English  children 
to  "  thank  the  goodness  and  the  grace  which  on 
their  birth  have  smiled." 

In  one  instance,  at  least,  Eucken  seems  to  be 
labouring  under  the  influence  of  his  own  orthodox 
early  training.  After  having  defined  the  tradi- 
tional doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  in  the  repellent 
sense  of  a  heroic  expedient  of  the  Godhead  in 
face  of  a  situation  that  had  become  intractable 
and  desperate,  he  goes  on  to  assert  that  all  the  other 
traditional  doctrines — the  Trinity,  the  virgin 
birth,  the  descent  into  hell,  the  resurrection  and 
the  ascension — arise  out  of  this  central  dogma 
with  a  mercilessly  inevitable  necessity,  and  that 
therefore  to  remove  one  link  of  this  closely 
concatenated  system  is  to  overturn  the  whole. 
"  There  is  a  tremendous  logic  about  the 
development  of  these  dogmas,"  he  declares, 
"  which  cannot  be  broken  in  the  middle  ;  he  who 
wants  one  cannot  refuse  the  other."  Ihis  is 
nothing  else  but  an  echo  of  the  obscurantist 
Dr.  Gerdtell's  indissoluble  connection  between 
faith  in  the  Atonement  and  belief  in  devils.  The 
"  tremendous   logic  "  to  which    Eucken  refers  is 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

certainly  present  if  the  Incarnation  be  conceived 
in  the  metaphysical  sense  of  the  old  creeds  and 
of  mediaeval  scholasticism.  But  modern  positive 
theology  has  long  moved  from  that  position,  and 
conceives  the  Incarnation  as  a  moral  miracle 
whose  focal  point  is  not  the  cradle  but  the  Cross. 
And  to  a  thus  ethicised  doctrine  the  virgin  birth  is 
as  irrelevant  as  the  empty  grave  is  to  faith  in  a 
living  Redeemer.  In  saying  this  one  does  not 
mean  to  imply  that  a  more  detailed  acquaintance 
with  modern  systematic  theology  would  modify 
Eucken's  demand  for  an  undogmatic  Christianity  ; 
one  rather  suspects  he  would  relegate  such  theology 
to  the  ineffectual  mediating  efforts  which  he  so 
unequivocally  rejects.  But  certain  it  is  that 
modern  Christian  thought,  having  surrendered 
the  underlying  metaphysical  presuppositions, 
knows  of  no  such  unbreakable  concatenation  of 
dogmas. 

To  sum  up  Eucken's  attitude  towards  the  Christ 
of  history  and  of  experience  is  not  difficult,  for 
he  has  expressed  it  in  this  book  with  characteristic 
directness  and  candour.  That  one  person  should 
be  at  once  true  God  and  true  man,  he  declares  to 
be  contrary  not  only  to  scientific  thought,  but  to 
the  modern  religious  consciousness,  and  insists 
that  such  a  view  cannot  be  held  without 
lapsing  into  docetism  (which  is,  of  course,  quite 
true,  if  the  old  doctrine  of  the  two  natures  be 
meant,  and  Eucken  strangely  seems  to  know  of  no 
other  doctrine  of  the  Person  of  Christ).     In  the 

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Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

Atonement  (again  defined  in  the  obscurantist 
sense)  he  sees  the  expression  of  a  deep  ethical 
conviction  of  the  moral  order,  but  rejects  its  dog- 
matic expression  as  belonging  to  a  superseded  stage. 
Mediatorship  he  regards  as  separating  rather  than 
uniting,  and  impairing  the  soul's  worshipful  rela- 
tion to  God  by  diverting  worship  to  a  supposed 
Divine  mediator.  From  these  dogmas  he  turns 
to  the  human  Jesus  with  His  incomparable  life 
and  His  teaching  concerning  the  nearness  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God  and  the  dignity  of  man  as  the 
child  of  God.  He  is  aware  that  historical 
criticism  has  not  left  even  the  Synoptic  picture  of 
Jesus  untouched,  but  has  rather  discovered  that 
it  is  painted  with  the  medium  of  the  adoring 
convictions  of  apostolic  discipleship.  Yet  the 
purely  human  core  can  be  disentangled,  and  Eucken 
holds  with  Wendland  that  the  man  who  cannot 
discern  the  throb  of  a  mightily  original  life  within 
the  framework  of  the  Synoptic  tradition  declares 
himself  incapable  of  historical  enquiry.  But  can  the 
human  Jesus  behind  the  Gospels  fill  the  central  and 
normative  place  assigned  to  the  Christ  by  dogmatic 
theology  ?  To  this  Eucken  answers  unequivocally 
in  the  negative,  in  the  following  passage  ("  Konnen 
Wir  noch  Christen  sein  ?  "  pp.  36-37) : — 

That  position  [the  normative  and  ruling  one  of  dogmatic 
orthodoxy]  is  grounded  upon  a  relation  to  God,  whose 
uniqueness  emerges  from  the  essential  Divinity  of  Jesus  ; 
only  on  this  supposition  can  the  personality  of  Christ  stand 
as  the  unconditional  Lord  and  Master  to  whom  the  ages  must 

109 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

do  homage.  And  while  the  person  of  Jesus  retains  a  wonder- 
ful majesty  apart  from  dogma,  its  greatness  is  confined  to 
the  realm  of  humanity,  and  whatever  of  new  and  Divine 
life  it  brings  to  us  must  be  potential  and  capable  of  realisa- 
tion in  us  all.  We  therefore  see  no  more  in  this  figure 
the  normative  and  universally  valid  type  of  all  human  life, 
but  merely  an  incomparable  individuality  which  cannot  be 
directly  imitated.  At  any  rate  the  figure  of  Jesus,  thus 
understood  in  all  its  high  and  pure  humanity,  can  no  longer 
be  an  object  of  faith  and  Divine  honour.  All  attempts  to 
take  shelter  in  a  mediating  position  are  shattered  against  a 
relentless  Either — Or.  Between  man  and  God  there  is  no 
intermediate  form  of  being  for  us,  for  we  cannot  sink  back 
into  the  old  cult  of  heroes.  If  Jesus,  therefore,  is  not  God, 
if  Christ  is  not  the  second  Person  in  the  Trinity,  then  He  is 
man  ;  not  a  man  like  any  average  man  among  ourselves, 
but  still  man.  We  can  therefore  honour  Him  as  a  leader, 
a  hero,  a  martyr  ;  but  we  cannot  directly  bind  ourselves 
to  Him,  or  root  ourselves  in  Him  ;  we  cannot  submit  to  Him 
unconditionally.  Still  less  can  we  make  Him  the  centre  of 
a  cult.  To  do  so  from  our  point  of  view  would  be  nothing 
else  than  an  intolerable  deification  of  a  human  being. 

These  words  set  forth  with  admirable  honesty 
the  real  position  of  many,  even  within  the  Churches, 
who,  having  broken  with  the  old  dogmatic 
standpoint,  shrink  from  their  own  convictions  and 
take  refuge  in  all  manner  of  neologies  and 
rationalisations.  For  such  theological  valetu- 
dinarians Eucken  is  a  steel  tonic. 

Eucken's  new  Christianity,  then,  will  have  no 
central  and  normative  Lord  of  life,  no  Divine 
Redeemer  other  than  "  God,"  conceived  as  that 
powerful  and  loving  Omnipresence  that  enters  our 
life  with  such  re-inforcing  and  redeeming  effect. 

no 


Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

It  will,  therefore,  be  nothing  else  than  the  spiritual 
life  as  conceived  in  his  philosophy  viewed  from 
the  standpoint  of  inwardness  and  Divine  initiative. 
In  such  a  Christianity  Jesus  will  be  the  greatest 
among  the  great  historic  personalities, 

a  creative  individuality  which  .  .  .  raises  the  problem  to 
a  hitherto  unguessed  height,  translates  us  into  a  new  world, 
and  by  the  complete  immersion  of  its  being  in  one  all- 
dominating  task,  exercises  a  sweeping  power  to  agitate  and 
vivify  the  soul.  The  presence  of  such  an  individuality  can 
become  to  us  also  a  mighty  impulsion  and  a  source  of 
new  life.     ("  KOnnen  Wir  noch  Christen  sein  ?  "  p.  194). 

This  new  life  comes  to  us,  according  to  Eucken, 
diffused  throughout  the  world-historical  move- 
ment and  not  focussed  in  one  point  within  that 
movement  ;  and  the  individual  reaches  it  through 
a  spiritual  immediacy,  not  through  an  actual  and 
personal  mediation.  With  this  we  have  reached 
the  culminating  point  in  Eucken's  sharp  diver- 
gence from  historical  Christianity.  His  exceedingly 
interesting  and  valuable  treatment  of  such 
questions  as  the  authority  and  function  of  the 
Church  and  the  validity  of  Christian  ethics  is  but 
auxiliary  to  this  central  issue,  and  cannot  be 
considered  here. 

One  cannot  but  feel,  first  of  all,  that  Eucken's 
approach  to  the  person  of  Christ  is,  like  his  attitude 
towards  the  religious  emotions,  not  sufficiently 
experimental.  There  are  two  non-experimental 
ways  of  approaching  the  subject,  both  needing  to  be 
combined  with  the  experimental  attitude  in  order 

in 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

to  be  entirely  valid.  One  is  by  way  of  historical 
criticism ;  the  other  by  the  test  of  the  new 
idealism,  the  new  moral  realism,  and  the  new 
religious  consciousness,  thus  subjecting  it  not 
merely  to  the  tribunal  of  a  coldly  investigating 
reason,  but  still  more  to  moral  and  spiritual  tests, 
and  to  the  divination  of  that  religious  intuition 
over  which  psychology  has  now  cast  its  aegis. 

But  it  may  be  urged  that  the  warm  human 
figure  of  Jesus  which  the  modern  religious  sense 
welcomes  and  the  new  idealism  admits  into  its 
framework  is  not  the  whole  historical  Jesus. 
We  must  take  that  figure  plus  the  impression  it 
produced  upon  its  followers,  an  impression  which 
was  nothing  less  than  an  experience  of  redemption. 
Now  Eucken  acknowledges  that  behind  the 
dogmatic  formulation  there  is  a  historical 
Christianity  in  which  the  stream  of  spiritual  life 
ever  grew  in  volume,  and  with  which  we  of  to-day 
feel  ourselves  in  unity.  But  that  is  hardly  specific 
enough.  The  question  is  not  of  those  elect  who 
lived  the  mysterious  and  profound  life  of  the 
spirit  in  all  the  ages  of  Christendom,  and  walked 
with  God  in  the  cool  garden  of  their  souls,  some- 
times deriving  nutriment  from  the  very  dogmas 
we  of  to-day  reject  in  the  interests  of  the  spiritual 
life,  sometimes  ignoring  or  rejecting  them. 
It  is  rather  of  that  primitive  experience  of 
redemption  which  is  the  only  thing  in  Christianity 
to  which  the  common  Christian  heart  vibrates, 
the  one  universal  language  among  many  sweet  and 

112 


Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

harsh  provincialisms  and  ephemeral  dialects  of 
the  soul,  the  experience  behind  Paul's  doctrine 
of  justification  and  Ritschl's,  behind  John 
Wesley's  sermons  and  Schleiermacher's  discourses. 
Jesus  plus  that  is  the  Christ  with  whom  we  have 
to  do. 

Now  one  is  well  aware  that  many  elaborate 
and  ingenious  efforts  have  been  put  forth  of  late 
to  prove  that  the  apostolic  conception  of  Chris- 
tianity was  not  due  to  the  impression  created  by 
the  Galilean  Jesus  (if  so,  one  would  have  to  add  to 
the  tragic  features  of  that  life  the  fatal  quality 
of  creating  wrong  impressions),  but  rather  to  an 
existing  Christology  or  Messiah-doctrine  whose 
affirmations  were  transferred  immediately  and 
en  bloc  to  the  person  of  Jesus.  One  need  only 
think  of  the  late  much  lamented  Dr.  Wrede's 
brilliant  attempt  to  make  us  believe  regarding 
Paul  that  it  was  his  Jewish  and  Hellenistic 
prepossessions  that  led  him  to  preach  Christ 
crucified — to  the  Jews  a  stumbling-block  and  to 
the  Greeks  foolishness.  Making  all  allowances  for 
the  influence  of  an  existing  Messiah-doctrine, 
few  will  in  the  end  be  able  to  resist  the  conviction 
that  the  speculative  Messiah  did  not  turn  into  the 
living  Jesus  of  himself ;  all  such  uniting  of  divergent 
thought-elements  round  a  centre  can  only  be 
accounted  for  by  a  force  of  attraction  which  cannot 
possibly  be  over-estimated.  And,  as  we  pointed 
out  already,  this  attraction  was  not  a  mere 
impression  ;    it  emerged  in  an  experience  of  a 

113 

I 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

Redeemer  "  who  loved  me  and  gave  Himself 
for  me."  What  mere  impression,  however 
radiant,  could  impel  the  first  confessors  to  preach 
a  crucified  teacher  as  the  victorious  Messiah,  or 
force  the  mind  of  Paul  into  an  identification  of 
this  Jesus,  by  whom  he  is  alleged  to  have  been 
scarcely  influenced  at  all,  with  the  Creator  and 
Soul  of  the  world  ?  We  may  sift  and  test  the 
dogma  of  the  person  of  Christ  in  any  way  we  will, 
but  whatever  our  valuation  of  some  of  its 
traditional  forms,  it  cannot  be  accounted  for  in 
quite  so  simple  a  fashion. 

No  one  can  read  Paul's  epistles  with  an  open 
mind  without  realising  that  his  doctrine  of 
redemption,  whatever  be  its  defects  and  ephemer- 
alities,  is  not  an  ingenious  combination  of  old 
speculations  with  new  impressions,  but  the 
expression  of  a  vital  experience,  the  passionate 
history  of  his  soul.  It  was  this  experience  behind 
the  doctrine  that  spoke  to  so  many  storm-tossed 
souls  throughout  the  ages,  and  is  speaking  still 
with  a  voice  that  no  change  of  dogmatic  position 
can  silence.  For  while  the  age  may  abandon 
a  doctrine  in  the  Pauline  sense,  it  will  still  continue 
to  experience  redemption  in  the  Pauline  sense,  and 
across  the  centuries  deep  will  still  be  calling  unto 
deep.  Throughout  Christian  history  every  voice 
that  has  spoken  with  universally  appealing  and 
convincing  power  has  spoken  out  of  this  experience 
of  redemption.  Even  in  the  realm  of  dogma  it  is 
significant  that  it  is  dogma  based  on  this  experience 

114 


Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

that  has  triumphed,  while  the  speculations  of 
noble  and  subtle  minds  who  lacked  that  experience 
have  fallen  dead  on  the  backways  of  history. 
The  history  of  dogma  is  nothing  else  but  the 
history  of  the  Church's  experience  of  redemption. 
Can  the  human  Jesus  bear  the  weight  of  this 
accumulation  of  derivative  experience  ?  Or  was 
he  really,  as  Eucken  implies,  the  unfortunate 
occasion  and  starting-point  for  a  departure  from 
pure  Monotheism  and  truly  spiritual  religion  ? 
We  not  only  may,  but  ought  to,  subject  Christo- 
logical  dogma  to  the  criticism  and  the  freedom  of 
a  truly  modern  way  of  thinking.  But  such  a 
modern  theology,  if  it  is  to  be  anything  more  than 
the  vague  guesses  of  a  blind  man  about  colour, 
must  start  with  a  new  religious  psychology — an 
examination  of  the  experience  of  redemption  from 
the  believers  point  of  view.  It  is  precisely 
Eucken 's  distrust  of  the  psychological  method 
that  deprives  his  approach  to  the  problem  of  the 
necessary  experimental  robustness,  and  that  has 
made  him  stop  short  at  the  critique  of  dogmatic 
crystallisations  of  religious  life.  Such  a  method 
must  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  the  Church  of 
succeeding  ages  has  "  produced  "  the  Christ. 
But  if  we  begin  our  study  of  the  history  of  dogma 
with  a  sympathetic,  intuitional  study  of  the  soul 
of  Paul,  we  must,  I  think,  be  convinced  that  such 
a  conclusion  is  as  incredible  as  the  atoms  of 
Democritus  which  finally  danced  themselves  into 
a  world.     Eucken  would  admit  at  once  that  all 

"5 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

great  creative  individualities  are  not  merely 
historically  but  psychologically  mediated,  that 
the  microcosm  of  the  life  must  be  interpreted  by 
the  macrocosm  of  its  influence.  But  in  applying 
this  method  and  perceiving  a  unity  of  spiritual 
life  through  all  the  ages  derived  from  Jesus,  he 
fights  shy  of  that  central  influence  which  has 
radiated  forth  from  the  Cross  and  which  cannot 
immediately  be  squared  with  the  new  idealism. 
He  recoils  from  the  dogmatic  Christs  of  the  various 
stages  of  Church  history  to  go  back  to  the 
historical  human  Jesus.  Two  things,  however, 
make  this  step  less  simple  than  it  seems.  If  it 
is  true  that  each  age  must  have  its  own  Christ,  and 
that  we  cannot  take  the  mediaeval  Christ  for  ours, 
is  that  because  each  age  grasps  some  valid  (or 
illusory)  aspect  of  his  personality,  and,  to  that 
extent,  "  invents  "  Him  ?  May  it  not  be  because 
"  He  leads  the  generations  on,"  and  has  not  yet 
finished  "  making  Himself  known  unto  His 
disciples  "  ?  Christian  experience  certainly  attests 
it.  We  may  rightly  recoil  from  much  in  the  dog- 
matic Christ ology ;  but  the  real  question  is  not, 
Is  it  entirely  valid  ?  but,  Are  these  vicious 
elements  central  aberrations,  or  are  they  merely 
the  gropings  through  which  "  slowly  the  biography 
of  the  Christ  is  writ  "  ?  The  key  to  an  answer  is 
found  in  that  experience  of  redemption  which  is 
the  fountain  of  doctrine.  If  it  can  be  explained  as 
a  departure  from  pure  spiritual  religion,  then  the 
Christ  goes,  and  with  Him  go  the  great  believers 

116 


Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

from  Paul  through  the  Fathers  and  Reformers  to 
the  present  day — the  men  who  not  only  experienced 
redemption,  but  traced  it  directly  to  the  Crucified. 

But  moreover,  the  task  of  finding  the  historical 
human  Jesus  is  not  easy;  and  that  not  so 
much  because  criticism  has  sifted  the  biographical 
material  with  such  a  stringent  hand,  but  rather 
because  of  what  each  student  brings  to  that 
eternal  Figure.  Eucken  rightly  points  out  that 
the  weaknesses,  the  idiosyncrasies,  the  intellectual, 
moral  and  spiritual  lacunae  of  each  age,  are 
reflected  in  its  conception  of  the  Christ.  Is  it 
not  equally  true  that  the  character  of  every 
individual  mind  that  approaches  Jesus  is  infallibly 
stamped  upon  its  limning  of  the  great  Portrait  ? 
Renan's  Jesus  reveals  Renan  more  than  Jesus. 
Hausrath's  Jesus  is  the  wise  and  benignant  rabbi, 
emitting  brilliant  aphorisms  which  strike  home 
even  to  the  6/as^mindof  the  nineteenth  century; 
and  there  we  have  Hausrath's  own  somewhat 
amateurish  and  shallow  mind.  For  Matthew 
Arnold,  Christ  is  sweetness  and  light,  speaks  with 
the  accent  of  a  pleasantly  pessimistic  culture, 
looks  at  us  out  of  wistful  eyes,  full  of  a  vague 
intellectual  pain,  and  we  recognise  the  Greek 
soul  of  Arnold  singing  beneath  a  half-accepted 
Cross.  Caird's  Jesus  is  a  poetical  Hegelian ; 
Seeley's  a  moralist  touched  with  emotion.  Does 
this  mean  that  these  men  "  invented  "  Jesus, 
as  the  ages  "  invented  successive  Christs  "  ? 
May  it  not  be  that  He  interprets  both  the  ages  and 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

the  individuals  who  try  to  understand  Him  far 
more  than  they  interpret  Him — that  He  is 
"a  sign  .  .  .  that  the  thoughts  of  many  hearts 
may  be  revealed  "  ?  These  questions  bring  us  to  a 
point  where  it  is  impossible  to  prove  or  disprove, 
for  they  concern  heart-convictions,  intimate  and 
passionate  intuitions.  But  this  much  may  be 
said,  that  it  has  always  been  certain  to  the  universal 
Christian  consciousness  that  the  crucified  living 
Jesus  accompanies  all  the  generations,  not  to  be 
appreciated  and  "  vindicated  "  by  them,  but  as 
their  eternal  Critic  and  Judge,  who  searches 
them  most  when  they  think  they  are  searching 
Him. 

As  a  necessary  consequence  of  his  valuation 
of  the  person  of  Christ,  Eucken  does  not  see  the 
redemptive  process  focussed  in  one  compendious 
historical  act ;  or  perhaps  it  would  be  truer  to 
say  that  his  philosophical  conviction  of  a  redemp- 
tive activity  diffused  through  the  whole  of  history 
largely  determines  his  valuation  of  Christ.  And 
going  further  back  still,  we  see  the  radical  cause  in 
his  conception  of  God.  A  creative  spiritual 
power,  such  as  he  describes  as  initiating  our 
spiritual  activity,  must  be  personal,  and  Eucken 
does  ascribe  personality  to  that  spiritual  Omni- 
presence. But  the  sense  in  which  he  applies  this 
term  to  the  "  Godhead  " — a  word  he  deliberately 
prefers  to  "  God  " — is  merely  as  a  symbol  to 
convey  the  idea  of  transcendence.  If  God  is 
"  personal  "  only  in  this  sense,  then  a  diffused 

118 


Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

revelation  of  His  power  is  completely  adequate. 
But  if  real  personality  is  the  key  to  the  spiritual 
life,  God  must  be  the  supreme  Personality ;  and 
such  a  Personality  can  adequately  express  itself 
only  in  a  supreme  moral  act  of  redemption  in 
history — an  act  corresponding  to  the  ethical 
totality  of  that  Personality,  and  therefore  capable 
of  becoming  "  a  new  pivotal  and  organising  fact 
in  the  moral  order."  And  philosophically  the 
demand  for  such  an  act  follows  from  the  concep- 
tion of  the  spiritual  life  as  infinite  and  eternal 
action.  In  "  The  Truth  of  Religion "  Eucken 
says : — 

It  is  sufficient  for  the  religious  conviction  to  experience 
the  nearness  of  God  in  human  suffering,  and  His  help  in 
the  raising  of  life  out  of  suffering  into  a  new  life  beyond 
all  the  sufficiency  of  reason.  Indeed,  the  more  intuitively 
this  necessary  truth  is  grasped,  the  less  does  it  combine  with 
dogmatic  speculation  and  the  more  energetically  is  it  able 
to  work. 

But  this  last  clause  (the  italics  are  ours), 
which  is  based  on  a  philosophical  pre-supposition, 
is  exactly  what  the  universal  Christian  conscious- 
ness denies.  The  experience  of  redemption  in  its 
classic  and  universal  form  tells  us  that  God's 
saving  help  and  grace  cannot  become  centrally 
effective  in  human  life,  and  in  the  race's  moral  pro- 
gress, except  as  a  personal  and  historical  act,  that 
merely  as  an  inspiration  in  the  hearts  of  men  it  is 
too  variable  and  uncertain  to  meet  the  need  for 
redemption  on  the  racial  scale.     All  through  the 

119 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

ages  it  has  reverberated  through  the  Christian 
heart  in  accents  of  a  deathless  conviction  that 
God  could  only  be  to  the  soul  what  He  is  by  doing 
what  He  has  done  in  Christ.  If  history  is 
the  expression  of  freedom,  if  things  really 
"  happen,"  there  is  room  in  our  world  and  in  our 
thought  for  the  supreme  moral  historical  crisis 
of  the  Cross. 

A  subsidiary  point  remains  to  be  noted — 
Eucken's  attitude  to  miracles,  which  is  one  ol 
unequivocal  rejection  on  the  ground  that  though 
we  have  departed  from  the  extreme  rigidity  of 
mechanical  causation,  we  yet  cannot  accept  any 
such  violent  interruptions  of  what  we  know  to  be 
the  natural  order.  He  therefore  recognises  only 
one  miracle — that  of  the  spiritual  life.  But  if 
the  universal  purpose  be  indeed  the  creation  and 
sustenance  of  this  spiritual  life,  if  the  purpose 
of  God  be  redemption,  then  surely  no  supposed 
fixity  of  the  natural  order  will  prevent  Him  from 
doing  anything  that  requires  to  be  done  in  the 
interests  of  that  spiritual  life,  in  the  effectuation  of 
that  redemption.  This  is  something  very  different 
from  the  old  retort  to  the  miracle-rejecting  sceptic, 
"  God  can  do  whatever  He  likes,"  an  argument 
more  worthy  of  a  South  Sea  Islander  than  of  a 
Christian  believer.  It  is  a  definition  of  "  omni- 
potence" in  the  light  of  Eucken's  spiritual  miracle; 
a  conviction,  not  that  God  can  do  any  arbitrary 
thing  He  likes,  but  that  He  can,  and  will,  do  any- 
thing   and    everything,    however    "incredible" 

120 


Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

and  "  miraculous,"  that  is  necessary  for  the 
redemption  of  the  sons  of  God.  The  question, 
then,  is  not,  as  with  Eucken,  Could  physical 
miracles  take  place  ?  but,  Did  they  take  place  ? 
And  here  the  believer,  as  well  as  the  scholar, 
has  the  full  right  to  decide,  if  his  conviction  points 
that  way,  that  such  miracles  were  not  necessary 
for  the  moral  end  of  God  and  man,  and  are  there- 
fore traceable  to  the  mythopceic  instinct. 

In  conclusion,  while  Eucken's  philosophy  of 
religion  belongs  to  the  pioneer  literature  on  this 
subject  and  is  full  of  light  and  suggestiveness,  and 
while  his  critique  of  Christianity  and  his  attitude 
towards  it  are  marked  by  deep  spiritual  insight 
and  by  all  the  powers  of  analysis  and  penetration 
which  we  have  learnt  to  expect  from  this  great 
thinker,  they  leave  us  unsatisfied,  not  because  they 
do  not  square  with  the  evangelical  position  but 
because  they  do  not  start  from  that  experience  of 
redemption  which  is  the  basal  fact  of  religion,  and 
specifically  of  Christianity.  Even  when  he 
expresses  himself  most  sympathetically  on 
questions  of  dogma — for  instance,  when  he  values 
the  doctrine  of  the  Atonement  as  the  expression 
of  a  very  real  problem,  that  of  God's  love  and 
justice — his  valuation  rests  on  an  appreciation  of 
certain  philosophical  "  truths  "  implied  in  the 
dogma  rather  than  of  the  experience  that  created 
it.  It  was  not  a  sense  of  the  antagonism  between 
God's  love  and  God's  justice  that  lay  primarily 
behind  the  doctrine  of  the  Cross.     Even  in  Paul, 

121 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

whose  mind  was  certainly  racked  by  that  problem, 
it  was  not  a  consideration  of  the  Cross  in  the  light 
of  that  tormenting  question,  but  a  blinding  vision 
on  the  road  to  Damascus  in  answer  to  a  moral 
conflict  and  disaster  in  his  own  spirit,  that  was 
seminal  to  his  theory  of  the  death  of  Christ.  Even 
in  Augustine,  whose  "  Confessions  "  teem  with  his 
wanderings  "  from  empty  shrine  to  empty  shrine, 
from  creed  to  creed,"  the  Cross  did  not  come  in 
relief  of  doubt,  however  vitally  and  not  merely 
intellectually  that  doubt  be  conceived,  but  as  a 
deliverance  from  the  lust  that  warred  against  his 
soul.  That  theories  of  the  Atonement  were  not 
only  coloured  but  determined  by  the  nature  of 
the  problems  that  shook  men's  minds,  and  by  the 
way  their  age  conceived  them,  goes  without 
saying.  But  in  every  such  theory  there  is  not 
only  something  which  intellectual  and  moral 
environment  cannot  account  for,  but  something 
that  runs  counter  to  such  environment,  and  whose 
explanation  must  be  sought  in  an  experience  which 
connected  forgiveness  and  moral  renewal  indissol- 
ubly  and  beyond  the  reach  of  argument  with  the 
Person  and  death  of  Christ.  We  may  be  at  liberty 
to  say  that  this  was  a  mistake  ;  that  while  their 
experience  was  real  their  perception  of  it  was 
faulty  ;  that  they,  in  fact,  misnamed  the  God 
whom  they  ignorantly  but  rightly  worshipped. 
But  such  a  verdict  can  only  be  received  with 
respect  if  it  is  come  to  after  a  patient,  thorough, 
inwardly    sympathetic    examination     of      every 

122 


Eucken  and  Historical  Christianity 

available  characteristic  instance  of  this  classic 
experience.  Eucken  has  all  the  qualifications  for 
such  an  enquiry  in  the  highest  degree.  He  is 
emphatically  a  spirit  in  noble  kinship  with  such 
experience,  and  one  cannot  but  hope  that  he  may 
yet  be  induced  to  write  a  companion  volume  to 
"  The  Truth  of  Religion  "  on  the  basis  of  such  an 
enquiry.  Meanwhile,  his  work,  as  far  as  it  goes, 
is  invaluable  to  the  modern  Christian  mind,  and 
suggests  spacious  and  rewarding  avenues  of 
thought. 


123 


IV 

Henri  Bergson  and  his  Philosophy 
of  Creative  Evolution 


CHAPTER  IV 
Henri  Bergson  and  his  Philosophy  of  Creative 
Evolution 
Bergson 's  life  and  work — The  ramifications  of  Bergsonism : 
Protean  form  in  France — The  Binet  enquiry — Bergsonian 
Neo-Catholicism  and  Syndicalism — Bergson's  inimitable 
style — His  three  main  works — His  crusade  against 
Intellectualism — His  conception  of  Time  as  concrete 
duration — Dialogue  between  an  Intellectualist  and  a 
Bergsonian — The  cinematograph  of  conceptual  intelli- 
gence unable  to  grasp  the  movement  which  is  the  stuff  of 
Reality — Sympathetic  intuition  steps  into  the  devenir 
rtel  which  is  Life — The  function  of  the  intellect  limited 
and  practical,  but  "  to  see  a  limitation  is  to  transcend 
it  " — A  logical  revolution  :  "to  understand  in  the  fashion 
in  which  one  loves  " — From  individual  development  to 
creative  evolution — Epigenesis  versus  evolution  :  critique 
of  mechanical  and  finalistic  theories — The  elan  vital  : 
Creation  original  and  incalculable — Instinct  plus  intelli- 
gence— Is  the  elan  vital  purposive  ?  :  Mr.  Balfour's 
criticism — Is  it  consistent  with  freedom  ? — William  James 
on  Bergson's  Philosophy  as  a  "  Gospel  " — Elements  of 
specific  value  for  Christian  thought — Has  human  history 
a  value  for  God  ? — The  relation  of  God  to  the 
world — Professor  James  Ward  on  "  a  realm  of  ends  " — 
An  "  anthropomorphic  "  God — The  Incarnation — Nature's 
'  prayer  "  to  God  and  His  answer  in  Christ — Creative 
evolution  and  the  Cross. 


CHAPTER    IV 

Henri  Bergson  and  His  Philosophy 
of  Creative  Evolution 

Known  for  years  to  an  increasing  company  of 
philosophical  cognoscenti  in  this  country,  Bergson 
descended  upon  a  larger  public  at  the  end  of  last 
year  with  what  might  be  described  as  a  gloire  de 
salon,  had  it  not  taken  place  under  strictly 
academic  auspices.  His  four  lectures  on  "  The 
Nature  of  the  Soul,"  delivered  at  University 
College,  London,  attracted  not  only  an  eager 
crowd  of  keen  students  and  thinkers,  but  also  an 
overflowing  concourse  of  enthusiastic  dilettanti 
and  jaded  hedonists  of  the  mind  in  search  of 
a  new  sensation.  For  once  the  daily  Press 
voluminously  belied  its  reputation  for  an  unshak- 
able apathy  towards  intellectual  movements,  and 
cautious  minds,  acquainted  with  the  event  only 
through  the  newspaper  articles,  suspected  a 
fashionable  fad  reminiscent  of  a  certain  "  polite  " 
revival  of  ancient  philosophy  some  years  ago, 
when  Plato  had  his  day,  or,  to  be  literal,  his 
afternoon,  judiciously  diluted  with  tea  and 
epigrams.    In  many  of  these  articles  the  suggestion 

127 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

of  philosophy  for  the  million — one  had  almost  said, 
for  the  nursery — was  emphasised,  and  to  this 
view  a  chance  remark  of  the  Professor's,  to  the 
effect  that  philosophy  could  be  approached 
successfully  by  the  simple  without  any  previous 
knowledge,  gave  a  certain  authority.  Sneers 
about  metaphysics  for  babes  and  sucklings  and 
drawing-room  philosophy  were  in  the  air  among 
the  intellectuals,  and  one's  first  impression  of  the 
great  philosopher  was  unconsciously  coloured  by 
this  atmosphere.  Listening  to  him  the  immediate 
impression  was  that  of  an  easy,  suave,  bland 
manner,  a  proficiency  in  I'art  de  bien  dire,  astound- 
ing even  in  a  Frenchman,  an  embarras  de  richesses  of 
illustrations  at  once  homely  and  piquant,  a 
genius  of  shrewd  wisdom  edged  with  the  tinkling 
bells  of  brilliancy  and  humour — everything,  in 
short,  that  makes  for  a  popular  vogue.  But  it 
did  not  take  long  to  realise  that  the  French  salon 
manner,  so  deceiving  to  the  British  mind,  covered 
something  more  than  a  master  of  words  and  a 
skilful  manipulator  of  thought-mosaic.  The 
popular  lecturer  slipped  out  of  vision,  and  one 
stood  before  the  world-philosopher,  the  man  who 
has  given  us  not  only  a  new  philosophy,  but,  one 
might  almost  say,  a  new  mind ;  the  man  of  whom 
William  James  said,  "  I  have  to  confess  that  his 
originality  is  so  profuse  that  many  of  his  ideas 
baffle  me  entirely.  I  doubt  whether  anyone 
understands  him  all  over,  so  to  speak." 

Born  in  Paris  in  1859,  Henri  Bergson  received 
128 


Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

his  early  education  at  the  Lycee  Condorcet,  where 
he  remained  for  ten  years  and  was  couronnS  for 
his  scientific  attainments.  His  early  bent  was 
towards  mathematics,  and  it  is  said  that  Marshal 
MacMahon  once  congratulated  him,  saying  that 
he  had  never  seen  so  small  a  scientist  win  so  great 
a  distinction,  the  reference  being  to  the  publica- 
tion of  a  treatise  in  the  Annates  de  Math'ematiques, 
when  the  author  was  only  sixteen.  He  intended 
to  devote  himself  to  the  study  of  mechanics,  and 
his  ambition  lay  in  the  direction  of  continuing 
the  philosophy  of  Herbert  Spencer,  who  had  won 
his  youthful  admiration.  But  as  he  studied  the 
mechanical  formulae  with  a  view  to  discovering 
their  philosophical  implications,  he  was  led  to  a 
conviction  of  their  inadequacy  and  even  vicious- 
ness  when  applied  to  the  life-process.  Abandoning 
a  narrowly  scientific  training  for  the  study  of 
"letters,"  he  entered  the  Ecole  Normale  Sup£rieure, 
and  at  the  end  of  three  years  graduated  in 
philosophy.  After  spending  over  seventeen  years 
in  teaching  in  various  lycees  and  colleges,  one 
of  which  was  Clermont,  where  he  wrote  his  first 
book,  "  Time  and  Free- Will,"  the  thesis  for  his 
doctorate  in  1889,  he  was,  in  1900,  appointed 
Professor  at  the  ancient  College  de  France,  where 
he  still  remains.  In  the  following  year  he  was 
elected  a  member  of  the  Institute. 

To  say  that  his  lectures  have  made  him  world- 
famous,  and  that  men  of  many  countries  and  races 
flock  to  the  sombre  lecture  room  of  the  old  College 

129 

0 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

de  France,  is  to  give  a  fair  indication  of  the 
tremendous  and  almost  protean  influence  of 
Bergsonism.  His  is  the  largest  lecture  room  the 
college  can  boast,  but  not  nearly  large  enough 
to  accommodate  the  polyglot  crowd  of  both 
sexes  that  gathers  every  Wednesday.  Of  late 
Russian  has  predominated  among  foreign  tongues, 
and  one  so  minded  could  frame  some  neat 
speculations  as  to  what  bizarre  and  exotic  form 
Bergsonism  seen  through  the  Russian  tempera- 
ment is  likely  to  take. 

Already  it  has  assumed  a  variety  of  interesting, 
not  to  say  alarming,  forms  in  the  minds  of 
over-ardent  disciples  in  France  and  elsewhere, 
as,  for  instance,  the  Binet  report  on  the  teaching 
of  philosophy  at  the  French  lycees  testifies. 
This  report  arose  out  of  a  not  unjustified 
sense  of  the  danger  of  the  anti-intellect ualist 
movement  to  the  cause  of  scientific  research,  some 
of  the  professors  complaining  that  their  students, 
under  the  influence  of  Bergson's  ideas,  had  come 
to  have  a  disdain  for  the  slow  and  laborious 
methods  of  experimental  science,  believing  that 
while  science  was  all  very  well  for  mechanics  and 
physicians,  it  did  not  give  us  reality,  and  therefore 
was  of  no  importance  to  philosophers.  When  this 
point  was  brought  up  for  discussion  before  the 
Societe  Franqaise  de  Philosophie,  Bergson  made  a 
spirited  and  convincing  reply,  showing  that  the 
theories  attributed  to  him  by  these  complainants 
bore  no  resemblance  to  anything  he    had   ever 

130 


Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

taught  or  written.1  He  had  never  belittled 
science  as  not  giving  us  reality — for  are  not  matter 
and  space  realities  that  the  creative  imagination 
cannot  afford  to  lose  sight  of  ? — nor  had  he 
subordinated  it  to  metaphysics,  but  had  rather 
insisted  upon  a  consolidation  of  the  two  based 
upon  a  clear  distinction  between  them.  In 
addition  to  evoking  an  outspoken  and  emphatic 
statement  of  Bergson's  fundamental  principles 
which  must  tend  to  clear  the  air  of  many  mis- 
conceptions, the  report  went  to  show  how  com- 
pletely Bergson's  ideas  had  gripped  the  young 
mind  of  France.  And  not  the  young  mind  only  ; 
for  professors  vie  with  sophomores  in  handing 
in  their  submission  to  Bergsonism,  and  Binet 
reports,  among  many  other  instances,  that  at  one 
single  school  no  less  than  four  of  the  professors 
have  adopted  Bergsonism  without  reserve  and 
made  it  the  soul  of  their  teaching.  Even  world- 
famous  philosophers  plead  his  authority  for  their 
views.  One  has  only  to  think  of  William  James 
making  this  remarkable  admission  in  his  brilliant 
Hibbert  Lectures  on  "  A  Pluralistic  Universe  " 
(pp.  214-15)  :— 

I  have  now  to  confess  .  .  .  that  I  should  not  now 
be  emancipated,  not  now  subordinate  logic  with  so  very 
light  a  heart  ...  if  I  had  not  been  influenced  by  a 
comparatively   young   and   very   original   French   writer, 

•  Cf .  such  passages  as  the  following :  '*  Reality  itself  in  the 
profoundest  meaning  of  the  word  is  reached  by  the  combined 
and  progressive  development  of  science  and  philosophy" 
("Creative  Evolution,"  p.  210). 

131 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

Professor  Henri  Bergson.  Reading  his  works  is  what  has 
made  me  bold.  .  .  .  It  is  certain,  at  any  rate,  that 
without  the  confidence  which  being  able  to  lean  upon 
Bergson 's  authority  gives  me,  I  should  never  have  ventured 
to  urge  these  particular  views  of  mine  upon  this  ultra- 
critical  audience. 

While  the  Bergsonian  philosophy  is  tunnelling 
its  way  through  the  academic  stolidity  of  all 
countries,  Bergsonism  in  France  has  long  over- 
flowed academical  boundaries.  There  we  have  not 
only  a  Bergsonian  philosophy,  but  a  Bergsonian 
art  and  a  Bergsonian  literature  ;  and,  more 
important  still,  a  Bergsonian  Catholicism  and  a 
Bergsonian  Labour  Movement.  Not  unlike  the 
Hegelian  camp,  Bergsonism  has  split  up  into  a 
right  and  a  left  wing,  the  former  being  represented 
by  the  Neo-Catholics  and  the  latter  by  the 
Syndicalists. 

On  the  Catholic  side,  the  influence  of  Bergson's 
ideas,  strongly  reinforced  by  James's  pragmatic 
philosophy,  in  particular,  his  "  Varieties  of 
Religious  Experience,"  gave  rise  to  no  less  than 
eleven  new  reviews  of  Catholic  philosophy  and 
theology  within  one  year.  The  main  stimulus 
was  in  the  direction  of  a  fresh  study  of  the  saints 
and  mystics,  and  one  might  note  in  passing  that 
it  is  precisely  the  lack  of  such  study  that  makes 
the  new  German  idealism  fall  short  of  affording 
complete  satisfaction  when  it  becomes  a  philosophy 
of  religion.  On  the  more  strictly  speculative 
side,  the  Neo-Catholics  adopted  a  pragmatic  view 

132 


Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

of  truth  as  a  growth  rather  than  as  a  static  limit, 
and  of  history  as  a  process  of  progressive  verifica- 
tion, holding  that  view  in  a  sense  which  enabled 
them  to  encompass  what  must  remain  unintelli- 
gible to  the  Protestant  mind — loyalty  to  their 
ecclesiastical  heritage  and  generous  hospitality  to 
the  new  science  and  the  new  philosophy.  The 
Vatican,  however,  did  not  regard  this  view  as 
quite  "  safe,"  and  made  a  not  unsuccessful  attempt 
to  crush  it  in  the  Encyclical  and  Syllabus  of  1907. 
But  the  fire  is  smouldering,  and  may  spring  into 
flame  again  at  any  moment.1 

Poles  asunder  from  Neo-Catholicism,  we  find  the 
Syndicalist  movement  also  claiming  Bergson  as 
its  intellectual  bond  and  inspiration.  Until 
lately  this  movement  has  been  but  a  vague  and 
turbulent  mass  of  yeasting  impulse  and  passion, 
beating  indeterminately  against  every  institution 
and  privilege,  and  propelled  by  blind  will  rather 
than  carried  by  a  dominating  idea.  Casting  about 
them  for  some  intellectual  basis  and  justification 
which  would  give  momentum  and  direction  to 
their  efforts,  the  leaders3  of  the  movement  seized 

'  Articles  on  Pragmatic  Catholicism  may  be  found  in  almost 
any  volume  of  the  Revue  Philosophique  and  the  Revue  de  M£ta- 
■bhysique  et  de  Morale  during  the  last  twelve  years.  Those  by 
Edouard  de  Roy,  an  enthusiastic  disciple  of  James  and  Bergson, 
are  specially  noteworthy. 

■  George  Sor«U  and  Edouard  Verth  may  be  mentioned  as 
leaders  of  the  Pragmatic  Syndicalists.  An  excellent  account  of 
the  philosophical  side  of  the  movement  is  given  by  C.  Bougie 
under  the  title  of  "  Syndicalistes  et  Bergsoniens"  in  the  Revue 
du  Mois,  April  1909. 

133 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

upon  Bergson's  idea  of  the  elan  vital  as  twin  of  their 
'elan  ouvrier,  or  at  least  as  including  it.  At  one 
with  the  modernists  in  revolting  against  dogma, 
tradition  and  inflexible  formulae,  they  hailed 
Bergson  as  their  ally  with  a  flourish  of  trumpets. 
"  The  College  de  France  collaborates  with  the 
Bourse  du  Travail,"  they  shouted  with  a  flaunting 
assurance  that  smacks  of  1789 :  "  The  flute 
of  personal  meditation  harmonises  with  the 
trumpets  of  the  social  revolution."  In  how  far 
Syndicalism  will  really  be  carried  and  rationalised 
by  the  leading  ideas  of  the  Bergsonian  philosophy, 
or  what  distortions  and  refractions  that 
philosophy  may  suffer  in  passing  through  the 
medium  of  that  movement,  cannot  be  foreseen. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  Bergson  offers  no 
closed  system.  Like  the  reality  he  bids  us  enter 
into,  it  is  still  in  flux  ;  like  his  own  elan  vital,  it  can- 
not be  packed  into  a  formula.  When  asked  for  the 
Bergsonian  philosophy  in  a  nutshell,  a  hot-headed 
disciple  retorts,  "  Can  you  put  Maeterlinck's 
'  Pelleas  and  Melisande  '  into  a  formula  ?  " 

Bergson's  style  has  been  the  object  of  almost 
extravagantly  admiring  comment  ;  and  there  is 
no  doubt  that  even  when  analysed  in  the  dryest 
light  it  appears  as  the  most  wonderful  vehicle 
through  which  philosophic  thought  has  ever  found 
speech.  Professor  James  has  somewhat  realis- 
tically compared  its  complete  adaptation  to 
thought  to  the  fit  of  elastic  silk  underclothing 
which    follows    every    movement    of    the    body. 

134 


Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

But  really  great  style  is  not  merely  the  dress, 
but  rather  the  flesh,  of  the  thought  that  informs  it, 
and  Bergson  comes  nearer  the  ideal  incarnation 
of  thought  in  word  than  any  other  philosopher. 
His  fertile  and  instinctive  gift  of  illustration  makes 
the  reading  oi  his  books  a  beguilement  even  to 
those  who  are  but  fingering  the  fringe  of  his  subject, 
and  has  earned  for  him  the  liveliest  gratitude  of 
the  busy  reader  who  finds  non-illustrative  work, 
such  as  Eucken's,  for  instance,  a  strain  upon  his 
jaded  faculties.  On  the  other  hand,  this  gift 
constitutes  a  danger  of  self-deception  for  the 
student,  who  is  apt  to  forget  the  profundity  of  the 
subject  in  the  clarity  of  the  illustration.  It  is  so 
easy  to  think  of  a  rolling  snowball  which  is  really 
the  sum  of  the  increment  it  gathers  on  its  course, 
and  cannot,  therefore,  like  a  rolling  stone,  be 
viewed  statically  apart  from  what  it  gathers  in 
the  rolling.  But  for  all  the  delightful  appro- 
priateness, the  absolutely  creaseless  "  fit  "  of  the 
illustration,  the  rolling  self,  gathering  and  carrying 
all  the  past  experience,  personal  and  hereditary, 
into  the  present,  still  remains  a  mystery.  Super- 
ficial readers  of  Bergson  are  a  little  too  apt  to 
send  that  snowball  rolling  through  our  bewildered 
minds  with  a  naive — "the  self  is  just  like  that," 
and  a  look  of  pained  superiority  when  we 
suggest  that  there  may  be  perhaps  just  a  slight 
difference,  and  that  enough  to  dash  our  delighted 
understanding  with  a  shadow  of  mystery ;  a 
case  of 

135 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

The  little  more  and  how  much  it  is. 
The  little  less  and  how  far  away  I 

But  the  wealth  and  suggestiveness  of  Bergson's 
illustrations  are  only  one  aspect  of  a  wider 
characteristic  which  separates  him  from  schoolmen 
ancient  and  modern,  and  links  him  up  to  philo- 
sophical users  of  racy  journalese  like  William 
James — the  simplicity  and  directness  of  his 
vocabulary,  and  a  certain  Socratic  homeliness 
which  writers  like  Green  and  Bradley  have  made 
"  bad  form  "  in  the  English  schools.  One  cannot 
but  be  amused  at  the  way  in  which  this  Oxford 
superstition  has  filtered  down  to  the  general 
reader  who,  as  a  rule,  admires  James  as  the  most 
"  sound  "  and  "  reasonable  "  thinker  he  has  ever 
come  across,  but  laments  his  amusing  but  sadly 
undignified  style  ;  while,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it 
would  add  both  to  the  sanity  and  the  gaiety  of  the 
nations,  if  the  pragmatic  British  mind  criticised 
James's  thought  a  little  more,  and  adopted  the 
English  equivalent  of  his  style,  at  any  rate  in 
ordinary  discussion.  It  is  not  merely  the  French 
or  Transatlantic  genius  for  limpidity  and  neatness 
of  phrase  that  determines  such  a  style  as  that  of 
James  or  Bergson  (one  does  not,  of  course,  claim 
any  similarity  for  these  two  styles  beyond  that 
of  directness  and  untechnicality)  ;  it  is  their 
conviction  that  to  confine  philosophy  to  the  schools 
is  to  doom  it  to  eternal  sterility,  that  indeed  its 
only  chance  of  life  is  to  bring  it  out  into  the  open- 
air  of  common  human  nature.     In  this  sense  it 

136 


Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

is  paying  Bergson  a  compliment  to  say  that  he  has 
made  philosophy  attractive  and  accessible  to  the 
man  in  the  street.  Given  a  stolidly  intellectualist 
view  of  philosophy,  and  "  every  man  his  own 
philosopher  "  is  a  sheer  impertinence,  a  vicious 
apotheosis  of  the  incompetent  amateur  ;  take  an 
intuitional  and  experimental  view,  and  it  becomes 
the  glory  of  the  expert  to  enable  every  man  to  be, 
in  some  sense,  his  own  philosopher.  There  is  a 
metaphysic  for  babes  and  sucklings,  and  it  takes 
a  very  wise  man  and  superlatively  powerful 
thinker  to  frame  it.  Bergson's  style,  however, 
conveys  far  more  than  the  frank  simplicity  and  the 
bland  lucidity  of  the  convinced  and  enthusiastic 
populariser.  There  are  points  ever  and  anon 
where  incisiveness  and  flexibility  pass  into 
picturesqueness,  and  picturesqueness  into  some- 
thing of  the  persuasiveness,  the  charm  and  the 
immediacy  of  poetry.  Thus  the  past  "  presses 
against  the  portals  of  consciousness  that  would 
fain  bar  it  out,"  and  memories,  "  messengers  from 
the  unconscious  realm  remind  us  all  what  we  are 
dragging  behind  us  unawares."  Or  take  this 
passage  on  the  intellect  : — 

Human  intelligence  is  not  all  that  Plato  taught  in  the 
allegory  of  the  cave.  Its  function  is  not  to  look  at  passing 
shadows,  nor  yet  to  turn  about  and  contemplate  the  glaring 
sun.  It  has  something  else  to  do.  Yoked  like  oxen  to  a 
heavy  task,  we  feel  the  play  of  our  muscles,  the  weight  of 
the  plough,  the  resistance  of  the  soil.  To  act  and  to  know 
that  we  are  acting,  to  come  into  touch  with  reality,  and 
even  to  live  it,  but  only  in  the  measure  in  which  it  concerns 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

the  work  that  is  being  accomplished,  and  the  furrow  that 
is  being  ploughed,  such  is  the  function  of  the  human  intelli- 
gence. Yet  a  beneficent  fluid  bathes  us,  and  from  it  we 
draw  the  very  force  to  labour  and  to  live.  From  this  ocean 
of  life  in  which  we  are  immersed  we  are  continually  drawing 
something  ;  and  we  feel  that  our  being,  at  least  the  intellect 
that  guides  it,  has  been  formed  therein  by  a  kind  of  local 
consolidation.  Philosophy  can  only  be  an  effort  to  melt 
again  into  the  All.  Re-absorbed  in  its  principle,  intelligence 
may  live  back  into  its  own  genesis.  But  the  enterprise  is 
hardly  one  for  collective  and  progressive  effort.  It  will 
consist  in  an  interchange  of  impressions  which  correct  and 
complement  one  another,  and  will  end  by  expanding  the 
humanity  within  us  until  it  shall  transcend  itself. 

An  admirably  clear  and  concrete  passage,  yet 
having  in  it  the  very  stuff  of  poesy. 

Bergson  is  not  a  prolific  writer.  He  is  not  only 
a  thinker  of  commanding  distinction,  but  also  a 
literary  craftsman  of  the  most  scrupulous  finish. 
Thus  one  of  his  briefest  studies,  "  Le  Rire,"  an 
essay  in  aesthetics,  on  the  comic  spirit,  recently 
translated  into  English,  took  twenty  years  in  the 
writing.  In  the  realm  of  psychology  he  has  done 
some  exceedingly  interesting  studies  such  as 
"  Le  Rgve,"  "  L'Effort  Intellectuel,"  and  "  Le 
Souvenir  du  Present  et  la  Fausse  Reconnaissance  "  ; 
but  these  do  not  come  within  the  scope  of  this 
book.  An  admirable  "  Introduction  a  la  Meta- 
physique,"  which  appeared  in  the  Revue  de 
M eta-physique  et  de  Morale,  January  1903,  is 
unfortunately  out  of  print,  and  can  at  present  only 
be  read  in  a  German  translation.  His  three 
main  works  have  been  translated  into  excellent 

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Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

English,  under  the  titles  of  "  Time  and  Free  Will," 
"  Matter  and  Memory,"  and  "  Creative  Evolu- 
tion," and  it  is  on  these,  but  especially  on  the 
last,  that  our  brief  survey  will  be  founded. 

"  Time  and  Free  Will,"  as  its  title  implies,  treats 
of  the  real  meaning  of  time  and  its  bearing  upon 
the  problem  of  free  will.  Briefly,  the  abstract 
time  of  the  mathematician  and  the  scientist  is 
a  spatial  conception  which  may  be  symbolised 
by  a  piece  of  string  with  knots  at  regular  intervals 
or  by  a  stick  with  an  infinitesimal  number  of 
notches.  It  takes  account  only  of  these  knots  or 
notches  ;  what  lies  between  them  might  as  well 
not  be  there.  In  other  words,  it  takes  a  static 
view  of  time,  emphasising  not  the  process,  the 
movement,  but  the  artificial  cuts  that  divide 
infinitesimally  small  durations,  but  yet  durations, 
from  each  other.  But  this  is  merely  to  apply  a 
convenient  formula  to  unmanageable  facts  after 
completion.  The  operation  is  retrospective,  post 
mortem.  Real  time  is  experienced  duration,  and 
from  the  experient's  point  of  view  the  moments 
are  not  independent  and  uniform — not  mere  cuts 
on  the  stick  we  call  "  time."  This  concrete  time  is  f 
a  becoming,  a  stream  of  self-creating,  and  it  is  by  \ 
placing  ourselves  in  this  stream  that  we  catch  the 
meaning  of  reality.  Time  apprehended  as  move- 
ment and  duration  is  of  the  very  stuff  of  reality, 
and  more  fundamental  to  it  than  space  ;  it  is 
"  eternal."  It  is  this  aspect  of  Bergson's 
philosophy  that  has  gained  him  the  title  of  the 

139 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

modern  Heraclitus.  What  that  dark-brooding 
mind  of  antiquity  fore-riddled  about  the  world 
being  in  flux  and  things  ever  changing  so  that  we 
"  cannot  step  twice  into  the  same  river,"  has 
found  a  strangely  beautiful  development  in  this 
most  clear-voiced  and  silver-tongued  twentieth 
century  philosopher. 

The  bearing  of  this  upon  the  problem  of  free  will 
is  apparent.  If  we  allow  the  intellectual  device  we 
call  time  to  determine  our  view  of  any  action,  we 
see  it  retrospectively,  as  completed,  and  we  can 
find  little  room  for  free  will.  But  if  we  look  at  it 
under  the  aspect  of  concrete  duration,  we  see  it 
in  process  of  change  even  while  we  look,  and  a 
sense  of  free,  initiative,  incalculable  force  is  the 
result.  And  passing  from  shallow  symbols  of  the 
understanding  to  the  deep  experience  of  reality, 
we  become  aware  that  we  are  greater  than  we 
know. 

"  Matter  and  Memory,"  which  followed  upon 
"  Time  and  Free  Will,"  is,  without  doubt,  the  most 
difficult  of  Bergson's  books,  and  a  detailed  account 
of  it  would  lead  us  too  far  afield.  It  treats  of 
spirit  and  matter,  attempting  to  show  the  reality 
of  both,  and  thus  uniting  idealism  and  realism  in 
a  higher  synthesis.  It  may  be  suggestively, 
though  only  suggestively,  summed  up  in  his 
own  words  :  "  Spirit  borrows  from  matter  the 
perceptions  upon  which  it  feeds,  and  restores 
them  to  matter  in  the  form  of  movements 
which  it  has  stamped   with   its  own   freedom." 

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Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

The  book  requires  a  fairly  stiff  training  in 
psychology  for  its  complete  understanding, 
and  its  account  of  the  mind  and  body  in 
relation  to  each  other  and  to  the  universe 
"  outside  "  is  of  so  original  a  kind  that  it  requires 
"  a  new  mind  "  to  grasp  it. 

In  "  Creative  Evolution  "  we  come  to  the  work 
which  set  Bergson  by  the  side  of  Eucken  as  the 
most  widely  discussed  philosopher  of  to-day.  If 
a  psychological  training  is  necessary  for  a  successful 
study  of  "  Matter  and  Memory,"  the  student  of 
"  Creative  Evolution  "  should  make  himself 
acquainted  with  the  fundamentals  of  the  philo- 
sophy of  natural  science.  It  is  a  significant 
feature  of  the  philosophic  revival  among  us  that 
physicists  like  Poincare"  and  Ostwald  are  among 
its  most  active  pioneers,  and  the  student  can  do  no 
better  than  preface  his  study  of  "  Creative 
Evolution  "  by  a  reading  of  Professor  W.  Ostwald's 
fascinating  book,  "Natural  Philosophy." 

As  we  shall  found  our  account  of  Bergson 's 
philosophy  mainly  on  "  Creative  Evolution,"  it  is 
only  necessary  to  state  here  that  it  presents  the 
view  well-known  to  readers  of  Professor  James, 
as  "  a  strung-along  universe."  To  the  old 
theories  of  mechanical  and  finalistic  evolution 
Bergson  opposes  a  universe  neither  created  once  for 
all,  nor  logically  necessitated,  but  simply  dynamic, 
creative,  the  vital  impulse  [tlan  vital)  at  work. 
This  is  creative  evolution,  or  rather  epigenesis, 
(for  evolution  implies  the  unfolding  of  an  implicit 

141 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

programme)  a  life-movement,  that  devenir  reel 
by  which  things  evolve  and  grow. 

Like  Eucken,  Bergson  makes  a  frontal  attack 
upon  the  intellectualism  which  has  put  its 
desiccating  hand  on  the  very  springs  of  mental 
initiative,  bred  fatigue  and  sterility,  evoked  a 
senile  distrust  and  nervous  despair  of  all  creative 
effort,  and  contributed  more  than  any  other 
single  force  to  the  popular  dislike  of  philosophy 
and  to  the  retreat  to  a  mechanical  view  of  the 
world.  It  has  gained  for  philosophy  the  reputa- 
tion of  a  concept-machine,  and,  on  the  whole,  a 
soundly  experimental  materialism  is  more  likely 
to  knock  its  head  against  the  door  of  life,  and  so  be 
brought  up  short,  and  perchance  led  to  the  stars, 
than  a  philosophy  to  which  the  art  of  seeing  life 
sub  specie  ceternitatis  means  to  sit  still,  and  shut 
one's  eyes  and  think  of  Hegel's  logic. 

Intellectualism  is  with  us  still — and  by  "  us," 
I  mean  the  average  student,  especially  if  he  have 
any  sort  of  theological  interest — one  had  almost 
said,  as  an  ancestral  superstition  rooted  in  the  very 
fibre  of  the  brain.  The  man  whose  life  is  sustained 
by  any  sort  of  theistic  faith  sets  over  against  the 
world  an  omnipotent  and  omniscient  God  who 
created  it,  and  who,  in  some  more  or  less  externally 
conceived  way,  rules  its  destiny.  This  means  that 
he  immediately  becomes  involved  in  a  purely 
intellectualistic  way  in  the  time-worn  problems 
of  destiny,  freedom,  and  the  mystery  of  pain  and 
evil ;   and  to  be  involved  in  these  problems  after 

142 


Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

an  intellect ualistic  fashion  is  as  much  to  be  caught 
in  the  iron  gin  of  mechanism  as  to  view  them  from 
the  standpoint  of  a  purely  materialistic  theory 
of  evolution.  In  both  cases  life  is  but  the  unrolling 
of  a  predetermined  plan.  In  both  cases  there  is 
a  certain,  one  might  say,  a  fairly  large,  amount  left 
to  human  activity  ;  but  in  the  last  resort  the 
freedom  of  the  human  agent  under  such  an 
externally  conceived  omnipotent  Governor  of  the 
universe  is  just  as  illusory  as  under  a  frankly 
naturalistic  scheme  of  physical  "law."  It  is  to 
the  average  mind,  standing  perplexed  and 
paralysed  in  such  an  impasse  not  of  its  own 
making,  that  Bergson  comes  with  a  liberating 
word,  as  well  as  to  the  philosopher  caught  in  the 
toils  of  his  all-too-well  articulated  system. 

Bergson  starts,  as  we  have  seen,  with  a  critique 
of  the  abstract  artificial  symbol  of  "  time."  For 
a  locus  classicus  the  pressure  of  a  tyrannical 
tradition  sends  us  once  again  to  watch  Achilles 
trying  to  overtake  the  identical  tortoise  which 
he  has  been  pursuing  since  the  time  of  Zeno. 
Get  your  intellectual  "  time-notches  "  marked  in 
infinite  number  upon  your  infinitely  long  intel- 
lectual "  time-stick,"  and  however  hard  Achilles 
runs  he  will  never  overtake  the  crawling  tortoise, 
because  time  will  always  remain  infinitely  divisible. 
The  only  objection  to  this  is  that  in  actual  life 
Achilles  does  really  overtake  the  tortoise,  and  that 
from  his  point  of  view  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
a  notched  time-stick,  only  the  putting  forth  of  an 

143 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

effort   which  embraces  time  and  space  and  the 
outstripping  of  the  tortoise  in  its  duration. 

Time  is,  in  fact,  a  fiction — "  a  bastard  space  " 
as  Bergson  points  out.  It  is  an  abstraction. 
What  is  real  is  duration  and  succession  as 
experienced  by  a  consciousness  which  is  a  whole 
in  continuous  change  or  movement.  And  this 
change,  in  contrast  to  inanimate  change  which 
proceeds  in  accordance  with  a  general  formula,  is 
personal  and  cumulative.  Its  "  moments  "  are 
not  independent  ;  each  moment  brings  something 
new,  something  that  never  was  before  and  that 
carries  the  whole  past  within  it,  not  as  determining 
it,  however,  but  as  affecting  it  at  every  stage.  We 
may  dismiss  the  process  as  adaptation  to 
environment ;  but,  as  Bergson  puts  it,  it  is  an 
active  adaptation  for  its  own  ends,  and  therefore 
a  true  creation,  very  much  in  the  sense  of  the 
creative  element  in  oratory,  where  the  speaker 
begins  by  working  with,  but  ultimately  works  on, 
the  ideas  and  passions  of  his  hearers  till  he  can 
raise  them  to  his  own  standpoint  and  infuse  his 
own  desires  into  them.  Bergson  presents  this 
l^  change,  this  movement  and__becoming.  this  self- 
creation,  call  it  what  we  will,  asJJae  very  stuff  and 
reality  of  our  beings  To  accept  this  is  to  break- 
sharply  and  finally  with  intellectualism  which 
declares  change  to  be  illusory,  and  with  naturalism 
which  defines  it  as  mere  transmutations  and 
combinations  of  the  same  ultimate  elements. 
This   latter   view   would   take    us   back   to   the 

144 


Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

atomistic  theory  of  consciousness  now  definitely 
abandoned  by  leading  psychologists. 

To  return  to  our  thoughtful  man  in  the  impasse 
of  intellectualism.  This  is  what  a  Bergsonian 
philosopher  would  say  to  him  :  "  You  are  applying 
the  laws  of  statics  to  a  problem  in  dynamics. 
You  are,  if  you  will  excuse  my  saying  so,  trying 
to  cook  your  hare  before  you  have  caught  it. 
You  are  trying  to  reduce  a  fact  you  have  never 
really  grasped  to  concepts."  "  But,"  persists  the 
man,  "  my  mind  craves  for  identity,  rest,  unity  ; 
I  must  start  there."  "  No,"  replies  Professor 
James  Ward  (surely  not  a  pluralist),  "  you  may 
end  there,  possibly,  but  the  only  place  to  start 
from  is  what  your  bugbear,  William  James,  calls 
the  pluralistic  universe."  "  Then  you  don't 
believe  in  concepts  ?  '^  stammers  the  man.  "  We 
do,  indeed,"  replies  the  Bergsonian  ;  "  without 
them  we  could  not  handle  the  life-flux  for  any 
practical  ends,  but  first  have  the  body,  then 
conduct  the  post  mortem."  "  But  there  are  so 
many  things  in  your  universe  of  change  and  flux 
that  contradict  those  necessary  laws  of  thought, 
without  which  my  mind  would  go  to  pieces  !  In 
your  world,  for  instance,  A  becomes  B,  A  and  C 
are  connected  by  B,  and  such  like  absurdities." 
And  then  the  Bergsonian  would  once  more 
produce  Achilles,  who  overtook  the  tortoise 
without  asking  leave  of  logic,  and  all  the  thousand 
and  one  things  which  logic  says  cannot  be  done, 
and  of  which  life  makes  very  short  work  indeed. 

10 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

Start  with  concepts,  and  reality  subsides  into 
meaningless  fragments. 

Man  hat  die  Telle  in  der  Hand, 
Fehlt  leider  nur — der  geist'ge  Band. 

Then  the  intellectualist  is  likely  to  do  one  of  two 
things.  He  may  find  room  for  all  those  worrying 
contradictions  and  oppositions  in  that  convenient 
logical  portmanteau  known  as  the  Absolute  ;  or 
he  may  take  the  Bergsonian's  advice  so  far  as 
to  consent  to  have  a  look  round  in  his  strung- 
along  universe  before  proceeding  to  his  congenial 
task  of  conceptualising. 

If  he  takes  the  former  course,  he  will  piously 
assure  the  Bergsonian  (we  must  remember  that, 
intellectualist  though  he  be,  his  is  that  sentiment- 
ally pragmatic  mind  that  goes  to  philosophy  for 
purposes  of  "  edification  ")  that  all  these  contra- 
dictions which  seem  so  real  are  dissolved  and 
reconciled  in  the  Absolute  mind.  To  which  the 
graceless  Bergsonian  may  reply,  that  it  is  not 
the  Absolute  to  whom  he  is  trying  to  teach 
philosophy,  but,  on  the  contrary,  to  a  very 
"  relative  "  being,  who,  so  far  from  holding  all 
the  antinomies  of  the  universe  within  his  grasp, 
cannot  even  know  to-morrow's  deeds  until  he 
has  lived  through  to-morrow.  Should  the 
religious  intellectualist,  however,  take  the  second 
course,  and  declare  himself  willing  to  start  with 
this  poor  pedestrian  world  of  flux  and  change,  his 
next  question  will  be,  "  How  am  I  to  get  inside 

146 


Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

this  creative  movement  ?  "  And  at  this  point 
the  Bergsonian  will  remind  him  that  there  is 
plenty  of  time  to  speak  of  that  creative  evolution 
which  covers  all  being  ;  our  immediate  F*ar*i"ff- 
point  is  the  creative  evolution  of  the  individual, 
generallytermed  development,  whicti,  weHhave 
seen,  is  a  continuous  and  irreversible  process  of 
self -creation. 

How,  then,  are  we  to  enter  into  this  movement 
of  the  individual  consciousness  ?  Intellect  will 
not  help  us.  "  Not  through  the  gate  of  intellect," 
says  Bergson,  "  which  works  by  conceptual  logic." 
Now  it  must  be  remembered  that  this  is  directed 
as  much  against  a  naturalistic  conception,  which 
holds  the  world  of  sense  as  the  sole  reality  but  uses 
intellect ualistic  logic  to  defend  its  position  and 
expose  the  absurdity  of  assuming  an  ideal 
Absolute,  as  against  intellectualism  which  uses  the 
same  logic  to  establish  that  Absolute.  Both  are 
fundamentally  intellectualistic,  and  Bergson 
opposes  both  by  frankly  challenging  the  theoretic 
authority  in  principle  of  this  conceptual  logic. 
While  assigning  to  it  an  important  sphere  in 
which  it  reigns  supreme,  he  submits  that  that 
sphere  is  not  the  world  of  being  and  fact,  not  life 
as  a  whole.  Viewing  the  life-flux  as  it  operates 
in  the  consciousness,  we  have  seen  that  the 
logical  definition  of  motion  which  conceives  it  as 
"the  occupancy  of  serially  successive  points  of 
space  at  serially  successive  instants  of  time  "  can 
only  give  us  a  purely  imaginary  "  occupancy  " 

147 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

or  "state,"  not  motion  at  all;  for  motion  is 
exactly  what  happens  between  those  points,  and 
for  this  there  is  no  conceptual  measure.  Take  the 
homely  image  of  the  rolling  snowball.  Conscious- 
ness may  be  conceived  as  a  sort  of  rolling  snowball 
determining  its  own  direction  by  the  new  demands 
of  each  moment,  and,  of  course,  carrying  with  it 
the  increment  which  creates  it.  Apply  your 
intellect  to  that,  and  it  will  tell  you  of  what  it 
calls  the  "  psychic  states  "  of  this  rolling  snowball 
of  consciousness.  It  will  thread  them  like  beads 
on  the  string  of  a  fixed  and  unchanging  "  me." 
But  such  a  "  me  "  does  not  exist,  for  take  away 
the  snowball  from  the  increment  which  creates  it 
as  it  rolls,  and  you  have  nothing  left.  But 
intellect  has  only  the  spatial  time-stick  to  measure 
with.  It  makes  arbitrary  cuts  in  the  process,  and 
presents  them  very  much  as  cinematograph 
pictures.  They  are  cut-out  pictures  of  states  of 
rest,  and  however  quickly  you  let  them  appear  on 
the  screen,  you  have  not  caught  the  reality  of 
motion.  While  you  are  cutting  out  discontinuous 
points  and  states  with  your  logical  scissors  the 
snowball  rolls  on,  and,  unlike  a  rolling  stone,  it 
does  not  remain  the  same  ;  it  carries  the  accumu- 
lated increment  of  the  past  into  a  creative  present. 
Without  losing  the  old,  it  creates  the  absolutely 
new.  And  intellectualism  is  just  that  perversion 
of  the  rational  point  of  view  which  denies  change 
in  things  because  its  definitions  of  things  are  fixed. 
Thus,  once  it  defines  two  things  as  independent, 

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Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

it  refuses  to  admit  the  possibility  of  any  sort  of 
connection.  To  use  Sigwart's  very  apt  saying, 
according  to  intellectualism  a  horseman  can 
never  in  his  life  go  on  foot,  or  a  photographer  ever 
do  anything  but  take  photographs. 

But  if  we  cannot  seize  it  with  our  conceptual 
faculty  without  breaking  it,  how  are  we  to  get 
into  touch  with  it  ?  Bergson's  answer  is  that  we 
can  only  do  so  in  one  way,  by  placing  ourselves 
at  a  bound,  or  d'etnblee,  inside  "  the  living,  moving 
thickness  of  the  real."  There  at  the  centre  we 
hold  the  key  to  the  situation.  We  can  now 
exercise  our  valuable  conceptualising  faculty, 
and  by  means  of  a  convenient  intellectual  abstrac- 
tion make  reality  portable  and  easy  to  handle  for 
practical  purposes.  Those  who  have  heard 
Bergson  lecture  will  remember  how  the  sound  of 
the  living  voice,  the  crisp  intensity  of  articulation 
sending  the  words  like  a  noiseless  bullet  into  the 
mind,  aided  the  intellectual  conviction  behind 
his  constant  insistence  upon  that  self-instalment 
in  the  heart  of  reality.  "  Messieurs,  si  vous 
pouvez  vous  placer  pour  un  moment  dans 
ce  va-et-vient  .  .  ."  and  again,  "  Si  vous 
pouvez  vous  y  placer  pour  un  seul  moment, 
messieurs.  .  .  ."  It  is  the  reiterated  pleading 
of  a  great  conviction. 

The  question  remains,  however,  How  are  we 
to  accomplish  this  placing  ourselves  within  this 
devenir  reel,  if  the  intellect  cannot  put  us  there  ? 
By  sympathy,  says  Bergson,  by  living,  intuitive 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

sympathy.  Does  intellectualism  deny  to  such 
sympathy  a  place  in  speculative  thought  ?  The 
fact  remains  that  by  it  alone  we  get  into  the  heart 
of  things  in  the  making,  behind  results  and  contra- 
dictions, into  the  why  of  things,  which  means 
that  by  this  alone  we  touch  reality.  That  reality 
should  be  of  this  perverse  and  anti-intellectual 
nature  is  deplorable  from  the  intellect ualist  point 
of  view,  but  the  Bergsonian  is  inclined  to  triumph 
secretly  that  these  things  are  hidden  from  the 
wise  and  prudent  intelligence,  and  revealed  to  the 
babes  of  despised  and  "  elementary  "  intuition. 
"  Philosophy  is  very  simple,"  says  the  man  who  is 
perhaps  the  subtlest  of  all  living  philosophers, 
"  and  you  are  so  learned."  In  other  words, 
"  Except  ye  become  as  little  children."  It  is  by 
sympathy,  then,  that  we  get  at  the  'elan  vital  of  a 
man,  at  the  living  centre  of  his  character  and  of 
his  philosophic  thought.  Intuitive  sympathy 
puts  us  in  a  flash  in  the  stream  of  "  making,"  and 
we  know  the  movement  of  reality  by  a  living 
understanding.  Knowing  the  force  that  produces 
surface  contradictions,  we  understand  them  all, 
and  find  the  true  life-centre  in  none  of  them  singly. 
Of  course,  this  is  vulnerable  to  the  disconcerting 
question,  How  can  you  prove  that  we  possess  this 
faculty  of  intuition  ?  The  materialist  denies  it, 
as  he  denies  what  he  terms  the  mystical  life-force 
it  apprehends  ;  the  intellectualist  relegates  it 
to  the  realm  of  cerebral  emotion.  But  the  question 
is  not  so  serious  as  it  looks,  except  to  the  man  who 

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Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

merely  looks  at  it  and  paralyses  his  vision  by  the 
fixity  of  his  stare.  We  all — plain  man  and 
philosopher  alike — talk  of  the  limits  of  the 
intelligence,  and  try  to  fix  these  limits.  How  do 
we  encompass  that  ?  Can  the  intelligence  see 
its  own  limitations  ?  Is  not  to  see  a  limitation 
to  transcend  it  ?  But  we  perceive  the  limitations 
of  the  intelligence  just  because  we  are  something 
more  than  intelligence.  We  are  not  merely 
analysers,  we  are  constructors;  not  merely  critics, 
but  artists,  creators.  We  can  put  ourselves  into 
the  stream  of  another's  vital  impulse,  because  the 
same  stream  flows  through  us  ;  it  both  carries  us 
and  is  "  us."  Our  thoughts,  emotions,  actions, 
purposes,  are  hidden  from  our  intelligence  in  their 
origins  ;  we  cannot  know  them  until  they  have 
arisen  ;  they  are  indeterminable  and  impredicable. 
Yet  they  are  surely  the  very  stuff  of  our  reality. 
We  do  not  "  know,"  we  feela.nd  live  them,  and  out 
of  this  feeling  and  living  is  born  that  sympathetic 
understanding  we  call  intuition.  Behind  and 
around  intellect  there  is  consciousness,  the  soul. 
It  is  the  nebulous  matrix  out  of  which  the  shining 
nucleus  of  intellect  is  formed  and  in  which  it  lies 
embedded.  It  explains  the  intellect  and  leads 
it  into  its  true  kingdom.  Not  the  little  point  of 
light,  but  the  half-illuminated  fringe  around  it, is 
the  thing  that  "  matters,"  and  our  reversal  of  these 
values  is  due  to  a  one-sided  development  of  our  life 
in  which  many  of  the  most  important  tracts  of 
instinct  and  feeling  have  been  allowed  to  go  dark. 

151 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

We  fumble  at  the  gates  of  reality  because  the 
keeper  of  the  keys,  which  is  intuition,  lies  asleep. 
Bergson's  philosophy  is,  therefore,  a  call  to  the 
sleeper  to  awake,  a  religion,  if  the  term  may  be 
thus  loosely  used  for  once,  which  cries  to  self-sunk 
weary  man,  "  Ye  must  be  born  again."  Says 
Gaston  Rageot,  "  Bergson  claims  of  us  first  of 
all  a  certain  inner  catastrophe,  and  not  everyone 
is  capable  of  such  a  logical  revolution.  But  those 
who  have  once  found  themselves  flexible  enough 
for  the  execution  of  such  a  psychological  change 
of  front  discover  somehow  that  they  can  never 
return  again  to  their  former  attitude  of  mind. 
.  .  .  They  have  understood  in  the  fashion  in 
which  one  loves,  they  have  caught  the  whole 
melody."  "  They  have  understood  in  the  fashion 
in  which  one  loves " — one  imagines  Kant's 
indulgent  smile  and  Hegel's  deliberate  lift  of  the 
eyebrow,  had  they  chanced  to  light  upon  the 
phrase  ;  one  pictures  Mr.  MacTaggart's  weary 
closing  of  inscrutable  eyes  at  the  sight  of  such 
honeyed  verbiage  perpetrated  in  the  name  of 
philosophy.  But  the  really  disconcerting  thing 
about  it  is  just  that  it  is  not  mere  verbiage.  To 
understand  in  the  fashion  in  which  one  loves — if 
there  be  a  Soul  of  the  world,  a  super-materialistic, 
psychical  element  in  life,  that  must  be  the  only 
fashion  of  understanding ;  and  modern  meta- 
physics is  giving  a  belated  hand  to  modern 
psychology  in  the  discovering  of  this  "  more 
excellent  way." 

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Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

As  for  the  intellect  to  which  mankind  has  given 
so  exclusive  an  honour,  Bergson  startled  a  good 
many  naive  intellectualists  by  declaring  its 
function  to  be  practical  rather  than  theoretical,  to 
be  indeed  specially  framed  for  dealing  with  matter, 
and  itself  something  of  a  constitutional  materialist. 
He  has  equally  startled  the  man  in  the  street 
who  happens  to  have  assimilated  his  leading 
thought,  for  the  man  in  the  street  joins  the 
intellectualist  in  setting  the  intelligence  high 
above  (only  he  would  call  it  low  beneath)  the 
practical  faculties,  practical  being  understood 
by  him  to  cover  such  matters  as  selling  tea  and 
pork,  and  theoretical  being  applicable  to  the 
discovery  of  a  new  scientific  "  law,"  or  of  a  new 
planet.  This  being  so,  it  might  be  more  intelligible 
to  say  with  William  James  that  the  intellect  gives 
us  a  theoretical  knowledge  about  things,  while 
the  intuition  enters  into  things  and  so  opens 
the  door  to  true  speculative  thinking.  There  are, 
as  we  shall  see  presently,  two  elements  in  creative 
evolution  :  the  life-force  that  creates,  and  the 
material  on  which  it  works.  This  material  has  a 
static  quality.  It  may  be  reduced  to  "law," 
represented  by  symbols  and  abstractions,  predicted 
and  calculated  by  the  intelligence.  The  life-force 
escapes  the  intelligence  except  in  dead  fragments 
and  isolated  aspects,  just  as  a  man  may  under- 
stand and  be  able  to  parse  and  explain  every 
single  word  in  a  poem,  and  yet  have  no  under- 
standing of  the  creative  genius  that  moulded  these 

i53 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

words  into  a  thing  of  joy  and  beauty.  Intellect, 
then,  cannot  enter  what  James  calls  "  the  thickness 
of  reality."  It  can  only  gather  the  scum  of  dead 
results  that  floats  on  its  surface.  But  this  does 
not  mean  that  it  has  no  part  in  the  understanding 
that  comes  after  the  fashion  of  love.1  For  one 
thing,  this  intuitional  plunge  into  the  core  of 
things  is  necessarily  very  limited  in  duration  ;  it 
is  only  by  calling  the  intellect  to  our  aid  that  we 
can  think  vastly  and  realise  eternities.  Again, 
our  experience  of  reality  is  too  unwieldy  in  its 
myriad  impressions  and  points  of  contact  to  be 
utilised  in  our  search  for  truth,  unless  it  is  laid 
hold  of  and  co-ordinated  by  a  stable  scheme  of 
concepts.  In  no  other  way  could  we  really 
handle  that  intuitional  experience  which  gives  us 
our  firmest  foothold  upon  reality.  But  to  this 
we  shall  return  later. 

Having  considered  individual  development,  our 
thoughts  may  expand  to  that  creative  evolution 
which  covers  all  life.  Evolution,  strictly  taken, 
means  a  gradual  unfolding  of  what  is  implicitly 
present  from  the  first.  Bergson  uses  it,  and  more 
loosely,  for  what  should  be  known  as  epigenesis, 
the  continuous  creation  of  what  is  essentially  new. 
The  Bergsonian  illustration  for  this  process  would 

1  "  Concepts,"  says  Bergson,  "  are  indispensable  to  intuition, 
for  all  other  sciences  work  with  concepts,  and  metaphysic  cannot 
do  without  the  other  sciences." — Introduction  to  Metaphysic,  p.  13. 

"  It  is  impossible  to  have  an  intuition  of  reality,  that  is,  an 
intellectual  sympathy  with  its  innermost  nature,  unless  its 
confidence  has  been  won  by  a  long  comradeship  with  its  external 
manifestation." — Ibid.  p.  57. 

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Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

be  the  creation  of  a  melody  out  of  notes,  of  a  poem 
out  of  words,  of  a  picture  out  of  colours,  all  of 
which  constituents  are  there  already  taken  in 
isolation,  but  become  a  new  whole  by  creative 
synthesis.  To  Bergson  evolution  is  "a  change 
which  is  an  active  adaptation,  a  utilisation  of 
what  promotes  life,  an  escape  from  what  antagon- 
ises it.  It  means  a  continuous  and  irreversible 
process  of  self-creation."  His  scientific  training 
enables  him  to  discuss  the  various  mechanical 
theories  of  evolution  with  great  thoroughness  and 
breadth,  and  his  critique  of  Herbert  Spencer, 
especially  will  interest  English  readers.  The 
essence  of  all  mechanical  explanations  is  to  consider 
past  and  future  as  calculable  in  terms  of  the 
present.  /  But  if  time  is  real,  Bergson  shows  that 
such  "  calculation  "  can  only  be  a  rough  guess 
resting  on  a  rough  experience  of  a  repetition  which 
is  only  approximate  at  best.  Only  of  inanimate 
things,  or  of  isolated  fragments  and  aspects  of  the 
life  of  a  living  being,  can  this  calculation  be  made 
with  approximate  certainty.  Only  in  geometry 
does  the  present  contain  the  future,  for  the  very 
simple  reason  that  geometry  does  not  know  of  a 
future  in  any  real  sense.  When  applied  to  life, 
science  can  only  give  us  a  cinematographic 
reproduction,  with  this  important  difference, 
that  the  "  pictures  "  of  science  do  not  "  move  " 
at  all.  The  "  movement  "  of  science  is,  as  we  have 
seen,  a  series  of  fixed  points,  determined  by  "  law," 
but,    as   a    matter    of    fact,    the    moving    thing 

155 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

only  passes  through  these  points  ;  if  it  "  stood 
still  "  at  any  one  of  them,  then  we  would  be 
forced  to  give  the  lie  to  our  eyes,  and  agree  with 
Zeno  that  Achilles  can  never  overtake  the  tortoise, 
run  he  ever  so  fast.  As  Bergson  points  out  in 
"  Matter  and  Memory,"  granted  that  a  thing  "  is  " 
at  some  place  at  any  moment,  we  may  argue  that 
it  never  moves  at  all. 

From  his  very  minute  and  illuminating  criticism 
of  mechanical  explanations,  Bergson  turns  to 
those  teleological  theories  which  are  the  peculiar 
temptation  of  the  religious  mind.  Finalism  is, 
of  course,  more  flexible  than  mechanism,  where 
the  whole  universe  stands  or  falls  by  the  tremble 
of  a  grain  of  dust  in  the  balance.  But  this  must 
not  blind  us  to  the  fact  that  it  makes  time  as 
unreal  as  mechanism  does,  and  sees  in  evolution 
only  the  realisation  of  a  programme  already 
drawn  up.  It  is,  in  fact,  "  mechanism  from  the 
other  end."  Moreover,  it  can  no  more  explain 
that  "  manifestation  in  existence  of  what  was 
already  real  "  which  it  recognises,  than  mechanism 
can  explain  the  change  in  order.  We  have 
happily  got  beyond  the  conception  of  a  world  in 
which  grass  was  created  for  the  cow,  and  the  fly 
for  the  spider,  and  mint  for  the  lamb-eating  man. 
But  we  are  still  haunted  by  a  more  or  less  internal 
finalism  by  which  each  separate  living  being 
exhibits  the  operation  of  the  final  cause,  its  parts 
being  compacted  for  a  common  end — the  greatest 
good  of  the  whole — and  evidences  an  intelligent 

156 


Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

prevision  on  the  part  of  that  "  soul  "  of  life  which 
the  theist  calls  God.  But  facts  contradict  such 
a  theory  at  every  step.  For  instance,  the  finalist 
tells  us  that  the  facts  of  repair  and  restitution  in  the 
living  body  show  that  it  is  struggling  towards  an 
end  which  accident  and  damage  are  not  allowed 
to  frustrate.  But  it  is  equally  true  that  the  same 
living  body  harbours  parasitic  lives  which  may, 
and  often  do,  attack  their  host.  This  means  that 
the  conception  of  internal  finality  is  self-destruc- 
tive. On  the  other  hand,  assuming  that  these 
parasites,  instead  of  antagonising  the  whole,  work 
together  for  its  final  good,  we  are  landed  in  that 
external  finalism  which  facts  have  long  since 
forced  us  to  surrender. 

Bergson's  evolution  is  creative,  then.  We  have 
the  creative  life-force  and  the  dying  matter  upon 
which  it  acts.  The  law  of  the  dissipation  of  energy 
tells  us  that  matter  is  ever  sliding  down  the  slope 
of  life  towards  inertia,  decay  and  death.  The 
life-force  is  pushing  up  the  slope,  insinuating  itself 
into  matter,  interrupting  its  downwards  impetus, 
moulding  it  into  increasing  adaptation  to  environ- 
ment. Thus  matter  is  at  once  a  hindrance  and 
a  stimulus.  The  forward  push  of  the  'elan  vital 
is  beset  with  resistance,  failure,  deviations, 
reversions.  It  drives  a  way  through  many  a  mass 
of  resistance  and  is  checked  now  sooner,  now  later. 
Here  it  can  go  no  further,  and  the  end  of  the  line 
is  called  vegetism.  There  it  bores  deeper,  and  the 
terminus  is  instinct.     In  one  instance  only  it  has 

157 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

tunnelled  its  way  through  matter  and  come  out  at 
the  other  end  as  consciousness.  This  is  a  loose 
and  graphic  way  of  representing  the  process,  but 
we  are  describing  neither  scientific  law  nor  philo- 
sophical ideas,  but  facts,  and  have  Bergson's 
authority  for  condensing  them  in  this  homely 
fashion.  With  vegetism  we  have  little  concern 
here  ;  instinct,  however,  is  of  acute  interest  to  us. 
It  has  been  described  as  "  a  blind,  yet  extremely 
delicate  discrimination,  exhibiting  action  without 
ideas,  unlearnable  and  unimprovable."  Now  it  is 
clear  that  instinct  can  never  provide  a  clue  to  life. 
It  can  use  it,  but,  lacking  powers  of  reflection, 
it  cannot  apprehend  it.  It  is  only  as,  united  with 
intelligence,  it  rises  from  blind  adjustment  to 
divining  sympathy  that  it  apprehends  life,  and 
that  apprehension  we  term  intuition.  Coming 
to  intelligence,  we  may  say  briefly  that,  while 
instinct  gives  us  a  knowledge  of  things,  intelli- 
gence gives  us  a  knowledge  of  relations.  It  would 
follow  that  man,  who  contains  within  himself 
a  rudimentary  and  undeveloped  instinct  as  well 
as  a  onesidedly  developed  intelligence,  carries 
within  himself  that  secret  of  vital  apprehension 
which  will  give  him  the  freedom  of  the  universe. 
Human  life  contains  many  a  broken  light  of  this 
perfect  intuition.  We  see  it  in  the  genius  of  the 
artist  which  enters  into  its  object  and  tears  the  very 
pulse  of  life  from  it  to  set  it  before  kindred  souls 
who  can  appreciate  it.  We  see  it — and  perhaps  it 
is  a  more  common  experience  than  we  imagine — 

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Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

in  those  moments  of  "  cosmic  consciousness," 
when  our  absorption  in  the  All  and  our  personal 
independence  are  one  in  lucid  equivalence  and 
adequacy  to  each  other. 

Bergson  more  than  once  goes  to  the  painter  and 
the  author  to  seek  illustrations  of  creative 
evolution.  In  every  sweep  of  the  artist's  arm, 
nay,  in  every  really  free  act  of  ours,  we  experience 
this  creative  life-impetus,  immanent  in  us  and  yet 
transcendent ;  our  personal  effort,  yet  deeper  than 
personal  and  conscious  endeavour.  Looking  out- 
side our  own  consciousness,  we  have  seen  it  in  the 
chlorophyl  function  of  the  vegetable  and  the 
sensory-motor  system  of  the  animal,  thrusting  life 
forward  to  greater  efficiency  by  the  manufacture 
and  utilisation  of  more  and  more  effective  explo- 
sives, successful  up  to  a  point  not  so  very  far 
along  the  line  of  its  thrust,  beaten  at  that  point. 
Turning  back  to  man,  we  see  it  all  but  successful, 
beaten  by  nothing  apparently  except  by  the  thing 
we  call  death,  and  reaching  its  highest  known 
effect  in  the  intuition  which  apprehends  it. 
We  see  spirit  borrowing  from  matter  the  percep- 
tions by  which  it  feeds,  and  restoring  them  to 
matter  in  the  form  of  movements  which  it  has 
stamped  with  its  own  freedom.  And,  finding  the 
intuitive  way  into  the  mood  and  nature  of  living 
things,  we  may,  after  barren  years  of  intellectualism, 
once  more  feel  the  joy  and  the  thrill  of  him  who 
finds  the  pearl  of  great  price  hidden  in  the  field  of 
life.     Bergson  expresses  this  very  characteristically 

159 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

in  a  remarkable  passage  which  is  worth  quoting 
in  full  :— 

This  faculty  [intuition]  is  in  no  way  mysterious.  Every 
one  of  us  has  had  opportunities  to  exercise  it  in  some  degree. 
Any  one,  for  example,  who  has  been  engaged  in  literary 
work,  knows  perfectly  well  that  after  long  study  has  been 
given  to  the  subject,  when  all  documents  have  been  collected 
and  all  sketches  made,  one  thing  more  is  necessary — an 
effort,  often  painful,  to  set  oneself  in  the  heart  of  the 
subject  and  get  from  it  an  impulse  as  profound  as  possible, 
when  there  is  nothing  more  to  be  done  than  to  follow  it. 
This  impulse,  once  received,  sets  the  spirit  on  a  path  where 
it  finds  again  all  the  information  it  had  collected  and  a 
thousand  other  details.  The  impulse  develops  itself, 
analyses  itself  in  expressions  whose  enumeration  might  be 
infinite  ;  the  further  you  go  on  the  more  is  revealed, 
never  can  you  say  everything  that  is  to  be  said  ;  and  yet  if 
you  turn  back  to  apprehend  the  impulse  you  feel  behind  you, 
it  is  hidden  from  you.  For  it  is  nothing  but  a  direction  of 
movement,  and  although  capable  of  infinite  development 
is  simplicity  itself.  Metaphysical  intuition  seems  to  be  of 
the  same  kind.  Here  the  counterpart  of  the  sketches  and 
documents  of  literary  production  is  the  totality  of  the 
observations  and  experiences  collected  by  the  positive 
sciences.     {Introduction  to  Metaphysic,  p.  56.) 

Fugitive  moments  of  intuition  seem  to  be  all 
that  is  granted  us  at  this  stage,  but  reflection 
keeps  all  those  things  and  ponders  them  in  her 
heart,  and  of  these  spiritual  appropriations  also 
it  is  true  that 

Tasks  in  hours  of  insight  willed 

Can  be  through  hours  of  gloom  fulfilled. 

Many  readers  of  Bergson  are  left  with  the 
question  as  to  how  far  his  elan  vital  is  really 

160 


Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

purposive  and  teleological,  and  whether  it  implies 
a  personal  God.  In  his  interesting  and  suggestive 
critique  of  Bergson  in  the  decennial  number  of 
the  Hibbert  Journal,  Mr.  A.  J.  Balfour  asks 
whether  that  purpose  of  "  self-augmentation  " 
which  Bergson  predicates  of  his  elan  vital  can  be 
called  a  "  purpose  "  in  any  real  sense  of  the  term. 
Ignorant  not  only  of  its  course,  but  of  its  goal, 
it  has  driving  power,  impulse,  creation,  but  no 
plan  of  operation,  and  many  failures.  Does  such 
a  blind  force  not  lead  us  into  a  more  serious 
metaphysical  impasse  than  the  acceptance  of  a 
God  with  a  purpose  ?  This  criticism,  while  it 
suggests  the  real  weakness  of  a  pluralism  which 
stops  short  of  that  "  God  with  a  purpose  "  to  which 
it  must  ultimately  lead,  is  less  than  fair  to  Bergson's 
view.  Bergson's  elan  vital  is  purposive — the  fact 
of  its  being  wholly  un mechanical  involves  a 
teleological  character — purposive  not  in  that 
vague,  groping  sense  Mr.  Balfour  reads  into  it, 
but  rather  in  the  sense  of  desire  and  direction.1 

'  In  Bergson's  words  :  "  Life  progresses  and  endures  in  time. 
Of  course,  when  once  the  road  has  been  travelled,  we  can  glance 
over  it,  mark  its  direction,  note  this  in  psychological  terms  and 
speak  as  if  there  had  been  pursuit  of  an  end.  But  the  human 
spirit  has  nothing  to  say  of  the  road  which  is  going  to  be  travelled, 
because  the  road  has  been  created  pari  passu  with  the  act  of 
travelling  over  it,  being  nothing  but  the  direction  of  this  act 
itself.  Evolution,  then,  should  give  to  each  stage  a  psychological 
interpretation,  which  is,  from  our  point  of  view,  the  best 
explanation ;  but  this  explanation  has  validity  and  even 
significance  only  in  a  retrospective  sense.  The  teleological 
interpretation,  such  as  we  shall  propose  it,  must  not  be  taken  for 
an  anticipation  of  the  future.  It  is  a  vision  of  the  past  in  the 
light  of  the  present." — Creative  Evolution,  p.  54. 

l6l 

11 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

Granted  that  the  conception  of  purpose  directed 
towards  a  certain  end  is  absent,  yet,  if  that  purpose 
is,  not  "  self-augmentation,"  as  Mr.  Balfour  puts 
it,  but  rather  self-development,  wherein  is  such 
a  conception  less  worthy  of  the  spirit  of  man  than 
the  Christian  conception  of  a  free  and  full  life  in 
Christ  whose  end  and  reward  are  not  outside  itself 
but  in  that  very  "  self-augmentation,"  which  Mr. 
Balfour  deprecates — in  "  life  more  abundant  "  ?  To 
discuss  the  question  with  any  degree  of  thorough- 
ness, one  would  need  to  enquire  what  exactly 
Mr.  Balfour  means  by  "  God  with  a  purpose." 
If  "  God  "  be  defined  after  the  manner  of  idealistic 
monism,  for  instance,  as  equivalent  to  the 
Absolute,  and  if  to  this  there  be  added  the  theistic 
conception  of  God  which  ever  tends  to  merge 
into  Absolutism,  then  "  God  with  a  purpose  " 
means  the  very  necessitarianism  from  which 
Mr.  Balfour  has  all  his  life  been  trying  to  escape  ; 
for  the  "  purpose  "  of  such  a  "  God  "  cannot  be 
thwarted  by  the  will  of  His  "  creatures." 

But  we  must  pass  on  to  the  second  half  of  the 
question,  which  is  generally  put  in  the  naive  form, 
"  Has  Bergson  a  personal  God  ?  "  In  attempting 
a  reply  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  Bergson's 
constructive  work,  which  is  likely  to  take  the 
form  of  a  philosophy  of  religion,  is  not  yet  written. 
Creative  evolution  does  not  necessarily  involve 
a  God  such  as  we  conceive  of  in  our  moments  of 
deepest  spiritual  insight — personal,  loving, 
redemptive.     Taking    a    "  hard "    view    of    his 

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Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

elan  vital,  we  may  see  in  it  nothing  more  than  the 
Will  of  Schopenhauer,  or  the  Unconscious  of 
von  Hartmann,  brought  within  the  verifying  reach 
of  human  experience.  But  a  more  intuitional 
reading  will  discover  between  the  lines  certain 
intimations  of  the  "  Father  who  worketh 
hitherto."  If  we  may  venture  to  adumbrate  the 
"  Bergsonian  "  God,  we  shall,  perhaps,  not  go 
very  far  wrong  in  believing  that  He  will  be  "  the 
ideal  tendency  in  things  "  made  personal.  Further, 
that  "  a  face  like  our  face  "  shall  answer  to  the 
soul's  deepest  emotions  and  aspirations  ;  that  is, 
a  God  who  works  as  we  work,  creates  as  we  create, 
baffled  by  environment,  opposed  by  enemies — 
a  God  with  whose  purposes  we  can  intelligently 
co-operate  in  a  real  sense,  and  who,  immeasurably 
above  us,  will,  by  His  power  and  grace,  further 
our  purposes  if  they  are  in  consonance  with  His 
own. 

It  has  been  further  objected  that  to  be  at  the 
mercy  of  this  urgent,  moulding,  and  only  half- 
aware  life-force  is  really  to  be  delivered  over  to 
a  new  kind  of  necessitarianism  far  less  noble  than 
either  that  of  monistic  idealism  or  that  of 
Calvinistic  theism.  But  granted  that  man, 
according  to  Bergson,  is  carried  by  the  All,  and 
that  this  implies  a  kind  of  determinism,  if  that 
All  transacts  itself  in  the  individual  life,  if  its 
purpose  is  immanent  in  man,  then  freedom  is  born 
in  the  house  of  necessity,  and  necessity,  so  far 
from  thwarting  it,  nurtures  it  into  the  full-grown 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

stature  of  manhood.  Our  Calvinist  forbears  used 
to  tell  us,  when  we  complained  of  the  excruciating 
paradox  of  predestination,  that  its  antinomies 
were  reconciled  in  the  experience  of  the  "  elect," 
whose  "  free  "  choice  was  rooted  in  the  prior  choice 
of  God.  Well,  any  to  whom  the  idea  of  a  freedom 
rooted  in  necessity  is  a  paradox  may  see  it  lived 
in  the  life  of  every  creative  artist  who  never  creates 
so  freely  as  when,  in  the  grip  of  an  inspiration  his 
own,  yet  transcending  him,  he  is  pushed  forward 
by  a  creative  impulse  that  often  carries  him  where 
he  would  not  go,  and  where  he  yet  had  always 
longed  and  meant  to  go.  And  going  back  to 
Mr.  Balfour's  criticism  of  Bergson's  "  purpose," 
if  that  purpose  be  really  the  purpose  of  a  creative 
artist,  then  it  cannot  be  so  fixed  as  Mr.  Balfour 
would  have  it  fixed.  Says  R.  L.  Stevenson,  "  I 
as  a  personal  artist  can  begin  a  character  with  only 
a  haze  in  my  head  ;  but  how  if  I  have  to  translate 
the  haze  into  words  before  I  begin  ?  I  can  find 
language  for  every  mood  ;  but  how  could  I  tell 
anyone  beforehand  what  this  effect  was  to  be,  which 
it  would  take  every  art  I  possessed  and  hours  and 
hours  of  deliberate  selection  and  rejection  to 
produce  ?  "  Shall  life  be  less  spontaneously  and 
originally  creative  and  more  bound  to  the  rigidity 
of  a  "  plan  "  than  art  ?  Does  life  merely  manu- 
facture, is  it  merely  a  kaleidoscope  in  which  the 
same  bits  of  glass  appear  and  re-appear  in  endless 
combinations  ?  Is  there  not  a  deep  truth  in  the 
philosophy  of  the  village  drunkard  who  said  that 

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Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

God  isn't  tied  to  His  own  purposes,  but  can 
"  change  His  mind,"  just  as  we  can  ?  To  shift 
the  action  of  the  elan  vital  on  to  religious 
ground,  is  not  ultimately  our  spiritual  freedom 
rooted  in  the  freedom  of  the  Spirit  that  bloweth 
where  it  listeth  ?  Or,  to  go  a  step  further,  does 
not  collaboration  imply  independence  ?  The 
above  quotation  from  Stevenson  is  taken  from  a 
letter  on  the  subject  of  literary  collaboration,  in 
which  he  lays  it  down  that  successful  collaboration 
is  only  possible  if  each  author  is  allowed  to  do  his 
own  part  independently.  Let  us  add  to  this, 
even  though  the  one  be  immeasurably  superior 
in  creative  genius,  and  the  originator  of  the  idea, 
as  was  actually  the  case  with  Stevenson.  If  then 
the  "  soul  "  of  the  elan  vital  which  we  call  God, 
chooses  us  with  the  passionate  choice  of  the  artist  to 
work  with  Him  in  the  realisation  of  His  idea  which 
He  imparts  to  us  as  an  impulse,  an  urgency,  a 
forward  push,  this,  so  far  from  precluding  our 
liberty,  implies  it.  But,  in  carrying  the  Bergsonian 
doctrine  thus  far,  we  are  getting  beyond  his 
intentions  or  implications. 

Bergson's  doctrine,  then,  in  its  most  central 
meaning,  is  a  "  gospel  " — a  call  from  the  illusions 
of  the  self-deceived  intellect  to  that  deeper  level 
of  intuition  at  which  the  soul  touches  a  reality  that 
is  neither  the  dream  of  some  motionless  Creator, 
nor  a  neat  machine-made  chain,  but  creative  life. 
And  this  gospel  does  not  lay  disrespectful  fingers 
upon  the  intellect,  or  count  science  a  mean  thing, 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

or  contract  the  horizon  of  life  to  the  pin-point 
of  intuitional  emotion.  Says  Miss  Evelyn 
Underhill  :— 

This  huge  vision  of  time  and  motion,  of  a  mighty  world 
which  is  always  becoming,  always  changing,  growing, 
striving,  and  wherein  the  word  of  power  is  not  law,  but  life, 
has  captured  the  modern  imagination  no  less  than  the 
modern  intellect.  It  lights  with  its  splendour  the  patient 
discoveries  of  science.  It  casts  a  new  radiance  on  theology, 
ethics,  and  art.  It  gives  meaning  to  some  of  our  deepest 
instincts,  our  strangest  and  least  explicable  tendencies. 
But  above  and  beyond  all  this,  it  lifts  the  awful  weight 
which  determinism  has  laid  upon  our  spirits  and  fills  the 
future  with  hope  ;  for  beyond  the  struggle  and  suffering 
inseparable  from  life's  flux,  as  we  know  it,  it  reports  to  us, 
though  we  may  not  hear  them,  "  the  thunder  of  new  wings." 

On  the  other  hand,  the  gate  into  this  new  world 
of  splendour  is  strait,  and  the  road  to  it  narrow. 
To  many  of  us,  cradled  in  intellect ualism  and 
absolutism,  standing  knee-deep  in  the  material 
pre-occupations  of  our  exacting  time,  yet  straining 
longing  eyes  towards  the  hills  of  lofty  and  dis- 
interested thought,  this  revulsion  to  empiricism 
seems  a  desecration  of  philosophy.  She  should 
pluck  the  stars  out  of  the  heavens,  we  say,  not  lie 
sprawling  in  the  mud  of  spawning  life  and  grub 
for  earthworms.  Nothing  is  more  significant  of 
our  enslavement  to  a  narrowly  intellectualist 
convention  than  the  supercilious  reception  which 
some  leaders  of  thought  have  extended  to  Eucken 
and  Bergson  until  recently.  While  a  large  and 
influential  literature  is  gathering  round  the  former, 

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Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

and  his  influence  is  making  itself  felt  in  many 
departments  of  life,  notably  in  education,  the 
Sanhedrin  of  truly  "  wissenschaftliche  "  German 
"  Gelehrte  "  are  even  now  not  quite  sure  if  a  man 
can  be  capable  of  valid  thought  and  yet  write 
like  a  "Schwatzer"  (babbler),  i.e.,  like  a 
straightforward,  educated  man  frankly  desirous 
to  communicate  his  thought  to  other  straight- 
forward, educated  men.  As  for  Bergson,  his 
unashamed  empiricism  has  caused  the  chaste 
votaries  of  the  pure  idea  to  blush,  and  as  long  as 
his  fame  had  not  reached  its  zenith,  he  was 
described  in  not  a  few  quarters  as  a  translator  of 
Yankee  psychology  into  metaphysics.  It  is 
unpalatable  to  the  professional  intellect  to  be  told 
that  a  dead  bird,  however  skilfully  stuffed,  can 
neither  sing  nor  fly,  and  that  all  that  intellect 
can  do  with  its  "  bird  "  is  just  to  stuff  it  for  museum 
purposes  after  it  is  dead;  to  have  a  philosopher, 
and  one  whose  sweep  of  constructive  thought  and 
massivity  of  knowledge  it  must  admit,  tell  it 
in  philosophical  language  what  it  long  since 
dismissed  with  a  smile  as  poetic  sentiment  : — 

Think  you,  'mid  all  this  mighty  sum 

Of  things  forever  speaking, 
That  nothing  of  itself  will  come. 

But  we  must  still  be  seeking  ? 

Sweet  is  the  lore  which  Nature  brings  ; 

Our  meddling  intellect 
Misshapes  the  beauteous  forms  ol  things  : 

We  murder  to  dissect. 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

Enough  of  Science  and  of  Art  ; 

Close  up  those  barren  leaves  ; 
Come  forth,  and  bring  with  you  a  heart 

That  watches  and  receives. 

Of  all  those  who  have  felt  Bergson 's  philosophy 
as  a  call  to  conversion  from  the  idolatry  of 
discursive  thought  and  the  pharisaism  of  the 
speculative  intellect,  none  has  more  clearly  and 
urgently  presented  it  from  this  angle  than 
William  James  in  "  A  Pluralistic  Universe." 

"  We  are  so  subject,"  he  says  at  the  end  of  his  lecture  on 
Bergson,  "  to  the  philosophic  tradition  which  treats  logos, 
or  discursive  thought  generally,  as  the  sole  avenue  to  truth, 
that  to  fall  back  on  raw,  unverbalised  life  as  more  of  a 
revealer,  and  to  think  of  concepts  as  the  merely  practical 
things  which  Bergson  calls  them,  comes  very  hard.  It 
is  putting  off  our  proud  maturity  of  mind  and  becoming 
again  as  foolish  little  children  in  the  eyes  of  reason.  But 
difficult  as  such  a  revolution  is,  there  is  no  other  way,  I 
believe,  to  the  possession  of  reality." 

SOME  THEOLOGICAL  IMPLICATIONS  OF  BERGSONISM 

The  elements  of  specific  value  for  Christian 
thought  in  Bergson's  philosophy  are  not  a  few. 
Taking  his  conception  of  concrete  and  "  eternal  " 
time  as  our  starting-point,  it  is  clear  that  if  we 
accept  such  a  doctrine  as  true  to  reality,  then 
whatever  "  new  "  theology  the  exigencies  of  our 
age  may  demand,  it  will  be  based  upon  the 
conviction  that  human  history  has  a  value  for 
God.  It  will  find  no  place  for  the  half  or  wholly 
Hindoo    speculation    as    to    our    essential    and 

1 68 


Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

immediate  one-ness  with  God,  and  of  human  life 
as  the  mere  making  explicit  of  what  was  implicit  in 
man  from  eternity,  and  of  sin  and  failure  as 
one  of  the  means  by  which  the  God  in  us  comes  to 
complete  self-knowledge,  or  as  mere  surface  specks 
on  the  garment  of  the  soul  that  will  one  day 
shuffle  off  this  spotted  robe  to  find  itself  where  it 
has  always  been — on  the  Eternal  Throne.  It  will 
return  with  a  deeper  passion  to  Lotze's  dictum, 
"  that  in  the  actual  passage  of  events  something 
should  actually  come  to  pass,  something  new 
which  previously  was  not  ;  that  history  should  be 
something  more  than  a  translation  into  time  of  the 
eternally  complete  content  of  an  ordered  world — 
this  is  a  deep  and  irresistible  demand  of  our 
spirit  under  the  influence  of  which  we  all  act  in 
life."  If  human  history  has  no  value  for  God,  and 
therefore  no  reality  for  us,  and  if  the  work  of 
Christ  consists  in  the  removal  of  illusions  merely, 
the  universe  may  be  eminently  "thinkable,"  but 
truly  moral  life  in  it  will  be  impossible,  for  our 
experience  of  a  moral  order  is  reduced  to  an 
illusion.  If,  to  use  the  language  of  a  certain 
school,  God  sees  us  as  we  are  from  eternity — "  on 
the  Eternal  Throne  " — then  our  sense  of  sin  and 
failure,  our  penitence  and  repentance,  have  no 
corresponding  reality  in  a  Holy  Will  which  must 
"  maintain  unhurt  the  world's  moral  aim  "  ; 
then  our  conscience  has  no  fastness  in  the  ethical 
vitality  of  God.  Or,  to  take  another  significant 
saying  of  this  type,  "  Sin  does  not  matter  to  God." 

169 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

All  one  can  say  to  that  is  that  if  it  does  not 
"  matter"  to  God,  it  cannot  "  matter"  to  anyone 
else  either,  and  we  get  back  to  the  old  time-stick 
with  its  notches,  to  Achilles  outstripped  by  the 
tortoise,  and  to  the  barren  logic  of  identity  with 
its  motionless  and  perfect  world  sub  specie 
ceternitatis,  its  self-redeeming  God,  and  ourselves 
as  mere  "  readers  of  the  cosmic  novel." 

Going  on  to  consider  the  problem  of  Free  Will, 
we  find  ourselves  facing  the  old,  tough  question  of 
the  real  relation  of  God  to  the  world,  of  the 
theistic  conception  of  God  and  its  tendency  to 
slide  into  absolutism,  of  the  Calvinistic  bias  which 
has  strangely  blended  with  an  incurable  Hegelian- 
ism  in  a  large  stream  of  modern  theological 
thought.  The  adequate  discussion  of  such  a 
problem  is  beyond  our  scope  ;  it  would  fill  a 
volume  and  demands  the  acutest  and  profoundest 
thought  our  time  can  boast  of.  Putting  it  in  its 
crudest  form,  men's  minds  at  the  present  day  are 
torn  between  the  "alternatives  of  a  pluralistic 
"  finite  "  God  and  an  omniscient  and  omnipotent 
Supreme  Being.  Nowhere  has  this  controversy 
been  treated  with  such  lucidity  and  mental  grasp 
as  in  Professor  Ward's  Gifford  Lectures,  "  The 
Realm  of  Ends,"  an  exhaustive  work  to  which 
students  will  long  have  to  resort.  But  while 
we  cannot  enter  into  such  discussion  here, 
this  is  tolerably  clear,  that  however  heartily  the 
theology  of  the  future  may  retain  the  theistic 
conception  of  a  Creator  who  somehow  over-rules 

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Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

His  world,  who  is  omniscient  and  omnipotent, 
whose  purposes  are  with  the  children  of  men, 
and  whose  thoughts  penetrate  the  spirit  of  man  to 
kill  or  to  make  alive,  such  supremacy  can  no  longer 
be  conceived  in  any  sense  which  makes  the 
freedom  of  man  less  than  creative.  We  are  not 
concerned  here  with  settling  the  claims  of  these 
rival  conceptions  of  God,  but  there  are  few 
theologians  whose  theology  is  of  the  heart  as 
well  as  of  the  intellect  who  would  not  agree  that 
a  pluralistic  "  finite  "  God,  primus  inter  fares — 
a  Being  whose  experience  is  akin  to  ours,  who 
follows  our  history  with  His  sympathy  and  furthers 
every  worthy  purpose  of  ours — is  more  in  accord 
with  both  the  intellectual  and  the  deep  spiritual 
demands  of  the  modern  mind  at  its  noblest 
than  an  Absolute  and  Infinite  to  whom  all  things 
are  known  from  eternity,  and  whose  purposes  are, 
therefore,  not  affected  by  new  developments. 

Whatever  form  our  conception  of  God  is  to  take, 
it  must  be  the  conception  of  a  living  God  with  a 
living  world — that  is  of  a  "  limited  "  God — not  an 
orientally  conceived  Absolute,  a  potter  God  with  a 
clay  world,  nor  the  inconceivable  and  meaningless 
Absolute  of  monistic  idealism.  It  will  be  urged 
by  some  that  Christian  experience  has  always 
corrected  theology,  and  reconciled  its  metaphysical 
antinomies.  We  have  already  referred  to  the  way 
in  which  it  has  always  managed  to  slip  through  a 
hole  in  the  close-meshed  net  of  Calvinism.  But 
as  the  mind  of  man  advances,  the  demand  that 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

our  "  theory  "  should  square  with  our  "  practice  " 
will  become  more  and  more  vociferous,  and 
intelligent  men  will  no  longer  be  content  to  accept 
a  theology  inadequate  or  opposed  to  their  experi- 
ence of  reality.  Whether  we  are  pluralists  or 
not,  we  must,  at  least,  start  with  the  Many — the 
whole  history  of  philosophy  is  one  tremendous 
illustration  of  the  disastrous  consequences  of 
starting  with  the  One.  And  if  we  start  with  the 
Many,  and  with  Bergson  enter  into  the  reality  of 
their  life-experience,  then,  however  soon  we  may 
be  forced  to  pass  on  to  the  One,  and  however 
rigidly  we  may  insist  on  His  creative  supremacy,  it 
cannot  be  in  such  a  sense  as  to  deprive  the  Many 
of  their  real  personality  and  creative  freedom. 
But  this  means  that  one  half  of  our  present-day 
theologies  will  have  to  go,  for  they  are  as  really 
necessitarian  as  the  hardest  Calvinism/  with  this 
important  difference,  that  they  do  not  apply 
their  underlying  principles.  It  looks  as  if  the 
theological  thought  of  this  century  would  once 
more  become  Theo-centric  rather  than  Christo- 
centric.the  problem  being  to  arrive  at  a  conception 
which  meets  the  demands  of  modern  thought,  and 
can  be  equated  with  perfect  mental  and  moral 
honesty  with  that  of  "  the  Father  of  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ."  Upon  this  problem  the  closing 
passage  of  Professor  Ward's  "  The  Realm  of 
Ends  "  is  much  to  the  point  : — 

One  final  question,  among  the  many  that  suggest  them- 
selves, I  must  not  wholly  omit.    We  have  been  contemplating 

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Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

the  universe  as  a  realm  of  ends.  If  we  were  asked  what  is  the 
end  of  this  realm  of  ends  we  might  answer  rightly  enough 
that  its  end  can  only  be  itself ;  for  there  is  nothing  beyond  it, 
and  no  longer  any  meaning  in  beyond.  It  is  the  absolutely 
absolute.  Still,  within  it  we  have  distinguished  the  One 
and  the  Many,  and  we  have  approached  it  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  latter.  In  so  doing  we  are  liable  to  a  bias,  so 
to  say,  in  favour  of  the  Many  ;  led  to  the  idea  of  Goxl  as 
ontologically  and  teleologically  essential  to  their  completion, 
we  are  apt  to  speak  as  if  He  were  a  means  for  them.  Those 
who  attempt  to  start  from  the  standpoint  of  the  One  betray 
a  bias  towards  the  opposite  extreme.  The  world,  on  their 
view,  is  for  the  glory  of  God  :  its  ultimate  raison  d'etre  is 
to  be  the  means  to  this  Divine  end.  Can  we  not  transcend 
these  one-sided  extremes,  and  find  some  sublimer  idea  which 
shall  unify  them  both  ?  We  can  indeed  ;  and  that  idea  is 
love.  But  here  again  we  trench  upon  the  mystical,  the 
ineffable,  and  can  only  speak  in  parables.  Turning  to 
Christianity  as  exhibiting  this  truth  in  the  purest  form 
we  know,  we  find  it  has  one  great  secret — dying  to  live,  and 
one  great  mystery — the  Incarnation.  The  love  of  God  in 
creating  the  world  implies  both.  "  Leiblichkeit  ist  das  Ende 
alter  Wege  Gottes,"  said  an  old  German  theologian.  The 
world  is  God's  self -limitation,  self-renunciation  might  we 
venture  to  say  ?  And  so  God  is  Love.  And  what  must  that 
world  be  that  is  worthy  of  such  love  ?  The  only  worthy 
object  of  love  is  just  love  :  it  must  then  be  a  world  that  can 
love  God.  But  love  is  free  :  in  a  ready-made  world,  then, 
it  could  have  no  place.  Only  as  we  learn  to  know  God,  do 
we  learn  to  love  Him ;  hence  the  long  and  painful  discipline 
of  evolution,  with  its  dying  to  live — the  converse  process  to 
incarnation —the  putting  off  the  earthly  for  the  likeness  of 
God.  In  such  a  realm  of  ends  we  trust  "  that  God  is 
love  indeed,  and  love  creation's  final  law."  We  cannot 
live  or  move  without  faith,  that  is  clear.  Is  it  not,  then, 
rational  to  believe  in  the  best,  we  ask  ;  and  can  there  be  a 
better  ? 

*73 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

It  comes  as  a  surprise  that  the  philosopher  of 
creative  change  should  not  have  extended  his 
enquiry  to  a  philosophy  of  history  ;  it  is  along 
this  line,  one  imagines,  that  Bergson's  thought 
will  bear  its  choicest  fruit.  At  any  rate,  his  work 
is  of  great  value  to  the  Christian  thinker  who  is 
troubled  by  the  difficulty  of  giving  to  a  concrete 
historical  fact  a  universal  and  eternal  meaning. 
This  problem  determines  Eucken's  negative 
attitude  towards  the  great  facts  of  the  Incarnation 
and  the  Cross. 

From  such  a  revised  conception  of  God,  some 
of  whose  elements  have  been  thus  provisionally 
defined,  at  least  two  theological  tendencies  will 
issue.  There  will  be  first  a  reaction  from  the 
extraordinary  fear  of  anthropomorphic  forms  which 
have  paralysed  our  theology  of  late.  This  curious 
attitude  has  filtered  down  to  the  average  Church 
member,  who  smiles  indulgently  when  God  is 
described  as  leading  His  people  in  war,  as  repenting, 
as  angry,  as  defending  His  rights  against  His 
enemies  and  laughing  at  their  confusion,  in  an  Old 
Testament  lesson — as  if  a  "  childish  "  view  of  a 
God  who  really  does  things  was  not  greatly  to 
be  preferred  to  a  metaphysical  view  of  an  Absolute 
which  is  beyond  everything  and  therefore  means 
nothing.  We  are  constantly  being  warned  against 
the  unpardonable  sin  of  viewing  God  anthropo- 
morphically,  as  if  we  could  view  anything  at  all 
except  anthropomorphically.  We  see  all  things 
in  the  same  childish,  inadequate  way. 

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Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

Flower  in  yon  crannied  wall, 

I  pluck  you  out  of  your  crannies, 

I  hold  you  here,  root  and  all,  in  my  hand, 

Little  flower — but  if  I  could  understand 

What  you  are,  root  and  all,  and  all  in  all, 

I  should  know  what  God  and  what  man  is. 

But  we  only  know  the  flower  anthropomorphi- 
cally,  as  we  know  God,  and  we  are  surely  coming 
to  see  that  such  anthropomorphic  knowledge  is 
truer  to  reality  than  the  vague  abstractions  we 
think  higher.  And  if  the  anthropomorphism  of 
the  Old  Testament  is  crude  and  frequently 
unethical,  how  do  we  correct  it  but  by  a  new 
anthropomorphism  conditioned  by  the  new 
revelation  of  humanity  in  Christ  Jesus  ? 

Another  theological  movement  springing  from 
a  corrected  conception  of  God  will  be  a  return  from 
the  Cross  to  the  Incarnation  as  central.  But 
it  will  not  be  a  return  to  the  old  metaphysical 
conception  of  the  Incarnation,  and  the  consequent 
substitution  of  the  cradle  for  the  Cross.  It  will 
be  a  new  insistence  upon  the  Incarnation  as 
posited  in  that  self-limiting  and  self-renouncing 
act  of  God  we  call  creation,  posited  in  a  race 
which,  being  involved  in  a  moral  difficulty 
consequent  upon  its  freedom,  failed,  yet  did  not 
fail  in  its  root,  and  therefore  could  evoke  the 
latent  Saviourhood  of  its  noblest  offspring.  And 
it  was  not  merely  evoked  by  a  situation  that 
called  for  Atonement.  It  is  rather  the  secret  and 
animating  pulse  of  creation.     The  Word  made 

i75 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

Flesh  belongs  to  the  very  idea  of  human  evolution, 
and  the  Incarnate  God  is  thus  not  merely  the 
Saviour,  but  the  root  of^  humanity,  using  the 
word  in  no  abstract  sense,  but  in  the  concrete 
sense  of  a  race  of  human  beings.  A  stauro- 
centric  theology  will,  therefore,  meet  the  situation 
as  little  as  a  theology  based  upon  a  purely 
speculative  idea  of  Incarnation  and  an  imaginary 
essential  one-ness  of  man  and  God.  The  Cross 
and  the  experience  of  redemption  must  remain 
the  starting-point  of  the  theology  of  the  future, 
but  it  will  not  be  wholly  adequate  to  the  demands 
of  the  spiritual  reason,  if  it  does  not  centre  in  the 
Incarnation  conceived  as  fundamental  to  humanity 
and  as  the  key  of  creation  and  focussed  in  the 
Cross. 

And  coming  from  the  Incarnation  posited  in 
creation  to  the  Incarnation  manifest  in  history, 
there  is  something  in  Bergson's  principle  of  the 
creative  originality  of  life  to  make  such  an  Incarna- 
tion reasonable  and  acceptable  to  the  modern 
mind.  On  the  premises  of  a  monistic  idealism,  to 
which  evolution  means  an  unrolling  in  time  of  the 
eternally  complete,  the  coming  of  Christ  can  have 
only  an  ideal  significance;  i.e.,  monistic  idealism 
must  evaporate  history  into  metaphysical  specula- 
tion, if  it  is  to  square  it  with  its  presuppositions. 
But  under  the  influence  of  the  doctrine  of  creative 
evolution  the  necessity  for  an  Incarnation  in 
history  appears.  Let  us  recall  the  action  of 
Bergson's  vital  impetus.     Pushing  along  one  line 

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Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

it  is  blocked  and  terminates  in  vegetism.  Another 
line  allows  it  freer  play,  and  it  emerges  in  instinct. 
In  man  it  forces  a  tunnel  through  matter  and 
emerges  as  human  consciousness  and  personality, 
and  the  creative  evolution  of  man  is  so  steadily 
and  triumphantly  progressive  that  "  we  have  no 
repugnance  in  supposing  that  consciousness  will 
pursue  its  path  beyond  this  earthly  life."  But 
this  last — the  conception  of  nature  perfecting  man 
along  psychical  lines  of  development,  and  the  fact 
that  the  "  newest  "  and  highest  thing  in  man  is  his 
"  susceptibility  for  God  " — suggests  the  emergence 
of  a  perfect  human  personality  in  whom  that 
susceptibility  for  God  shall  have  developed  into 
a  "  real  union  of  being  "  with  God.  One  has  only 
to  remember  the  scientific  commonplace  of 
"nature's  response  to  environment,"  summed  up 
in  "  function  precedes  organ,"  to  realise  that  if 
that  susceptibility  for  God  be  the  "  function," 
then  God  becomes  the  "  environment  "  of  nature, 
and  the  next  step  must  be  the  creation  of  that 
"  organ  "  through  which  the  organism  shall  be 
perfected.  And  if  that  perfecter  of  the  organism 
we  call  Christ  is  that  towards  which  the  vital 
impetus  is  pushing,  then  life  with  its  infinite 
originality  and  inventiveness  will  bring  the  Christ 
in,  in  a  way  quite  impredicable  by  reason  and 
quite  unintelligible  to  the  "  evolutionary  "  mind. 
Looking  at  man  as  in  process  of  creative  develop- 
ment, we  see  the  urgent  demand  for  a  Christ. 
Looking  at  the  Christ  of  history,  we  feel  that  in 

177 

11 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

Him  that  demand  is  realised.     But,  further,  if  the 
great  hindrance  to  the  development  of  the  God- 
instinct  is  what  we  call  sin,  then  the  perfecter  of 
the  organism  must  be  a  Saviour.1 
We  see,  then,  that 

All  tended  to  mankind, 
And,  man  produced,  all  had  its  end  thus  far  : 
But  in  completed  man  begins  anew 
A  tendency  to  God. 

And  if  this  chain  of  ends  is  really  an  epigenesis, 
not  a  mere  evolution,  if  life  really  creates,  then  the 
lowly  birth  in  an  obscure  corner  of  the  world,  and 
the  life  flowering  from  so  poor  and  bitter  a  racial 
soil,  and  the  Galilean  teaching  falling  so  unheeded 
upon  the  scornful  ears  of  the  great  ones  of  the 
earth,  and  the  ruthless  and  brutal  cutting  off  of  so 
briefly-blooming  a  flower,  leave  the  understanding 
untroubled.  For  if  the  purpose  behind  the  pulsing 
pressure  of  the  elan  vital  be  indeed  the 
bringing  in  in  due  time  of  One  who  is  to  be  the 
Perfecter  of  the  race,  because  its  Saviour,  it  will 
bring  Him  in  with  the  incalculable  originality  of 
its  creative  self — an  offence  to  our  conceptual 
logic,  but  the  power  of  God  to  the  intuitive 
sympathy  that  becomes  contemporaneous  with 
Him.     And  such  contemporaneousness  is  faith. 

1  It  seems  hardly  necessary  to  deal  with  the  popular  objection 
that  if  Christ  be  indeed  the  perfect  Man  He  must  come,  not  at  the 
beginning,  but  at  the  end  of  the  race's  moral  evolution.  But  it  is 
clear  that  the  highest  perfection  is  productive,  and  the  perfect 
Man  could  do  nothing  for  the  world's  perfecting  if  he  came  at 
its  end. 

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Bergson  and  Creative  Evolution 

If  we  accept  creative  evolution,  then,  which 
means  a  world  in  which  things  really  "  happen," 
we  shall  be  forced  to  accept  a  God  also  who 
expresses  Himself  in  creative  action  called  forth 
by  changing  situations.  And  further,  if  we 
believe,  as  we  all  experimentally  believe,  that  one 
really  personal  act  of  ours  may  be  of  critical  and 
supreme  significance  for  all  our  life,  then  we  cannot 
refuse  the  conviction  that  a  personal  God  can, 
by  an  act  of  His  which  is,  as  it  were,  the  sum  of 
His  moral  output,  change  the  life  of  the  race. 
We  may  talk  of  a  diffused  Divine  influence  and 
inspiration,  and  of  the  spiritual  immediacy,  the 
intimacy  of  intuition  by  which  the  soul  touches 
this  stream  of  influence,  and  no  one  will  deny  that 
this  is  really  so.  But  we  contend  that  it  is  so  only 
because  that  "  stream  "  is  gathered  up  into  that 
one,  great,  critical,  creative  act  we  call  the  Cross. 
It  is  that  act  of  God,  and  the  Incarnation  of  which 
it  is  the  focus,  that  makes  it  possible 

That  at  the  next  white  corner  of  the  road 
My  eyes  may  look  on  Him. 

To  believe  in  a  creative  evolution  is  to  believe  in 
miracles. 


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Christian   Theology  and   Recent 
Philosophical  Thought 


CHAPTER  V 

Christian  Theology  and  Recent  Philosophical 
Thought 

Review  of  situation — The  alleged  "  insularity  "  of  theo- 
logy— Nineteenth  century  theology  and  Hegelianism — 
The  influence  of  theology  upon  philosophical  thought — 
Soren  Kierkegaard — Neander,  Dorner  and  Harnack — 
Ritschlianism — The  contribution  of  recent  thought- 
movements  to  theology — A  more  penetrative  critique  of 
our  Christian  culture — The  consideration  of  the  modern 
experience  of  Redemption  as  well  as  of  the  "  Pauline  " — 
The  teaching  of  Jesus  not  a  preliminary  to  Pauhnism — 
The  authority  of  religious  experience  and  the  Christ  of 
history — Principal  Forsyth  and  Dr.  Denney  on  objective 
authority — The  incomplete  ethicising  of  theology — Eucken's 
"Either -Or"  and  the  "offence"  of  the  Gospel — Has 
History  "vindicated"  Jesus? — The  Atonement  in  the 
light  of  Activism  and  Creative  Evolution—  A  new  doctrine 
of  the  spiritual  reason  :  the  experience  of  Redemption  as 
a  Gnosis — The  mutual  relation  and  independence  of 
philosophy  and  theology — Philosophy  as  a  fore-runner — 
The  autonomy  of  theology. 


CHAPTER  V 

Christian  Theology  and   Recent 
Philosophical  Thought 

We  have  seen  that  a  revolt  from  our  soulless 
and  complacent  civilisation,  a  recognition  of  the 
truth-value  of  religion,  and  a  repudiation  of  the 
hegemony  of  the  intellect  are  fundamental 
elements  of  modern  thought.  We  have  also  seen 
how  these  elements  find  their  formulation  and 
expression  ;  how  Eucken  especially  challenges  a 
materialistic  culture  in  the  name  of  the  spiritual 
life  ;  and  how  both  Eucken  and  Bergson  see 
the  foundation  and  explanation  of  that  life  in 
religion,  and  how  both  deny  the  claim  of  the 
intelligence  to  be  the  pathway  to  reality.  Also 
how  Bergson  calls  upon  the  soul  of  the  age  to 
shake  off  the  yoke  of  a  usurping  intelligence,  and, 
yielding  to  the  still  small  voice  of  a  misprized 
intuition,  place  itself  humbly  in  the  stream 
of  creative  life  and  so  make  contact  with  reality. 
And  even  so  cursory  a  survey  of  the  thought  of 
these  two  philosophers  as  is  given  in  these  pages 
has  gone  to  show  that  neither  of  these 
thinkers  founds  his  views  upon  subjective 
"  faith,"  or  "  feeling,"  and  that  both  manifest  an 

183 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

intellectual  temper  at  once  stringent  and  liberal. 
While  Eucken  lays  insistent  stress  upon  the  need 
of  a  speculative  basis  alike  for  a  philosophy  of 
life  and  for  religion,  Bergson  uses  the  results  of 
biology  and  psychology,  neither  of  them 
"  scientific  "  in  the  sense  of  being  mathematical, 
yet  both  having  standards  and  methods  of  their 
own,  to  establish  over  against  the  idol  of  discursive 
reason  that  intuitive  understanding  which  is  the 
mysterious  and  profound  life  of  the  soul.  And  if 
their  thought  is  destined  to  influence  theology, 
it  is  no  less  true  that  theology  has  had  an 
unsuspected  share  in  the  shaping  of  it. 

One  often  hears  it  said,  and  never  more  often 
than  to-day,  that  theology  has  precluded  its  own 
future  by  perversely  cutting  itself  off  from  the 
philosophical  thought-currents  of  the  time.  But 
this  hackneyed  statement  will  hardly  bear  investi- 
gation. The  average  preacher  may  have  insulated 
himself  intellectually  in  the  past,  partly  from 
narrowness  of  training,  partly  from  pre-occupa- 
tion  with  the  work  of  "  serving  tables,"  partly 
from  a  pragmatic  desire  to  adjust  his  message  to 
immature  minds,  and  from  the  fear  of  coming  into 
conflict  with  rigidly  conservative  elements  in  his 
congregation  ;  though  even  this  is  true  only  in  a 
far  more  limited  sense  than  many  sweeping 
critics  would  have  it.  But  the  theologians 
certainly  cannot,  on  the  whole,  be  charged  with 
such  parochialism  of  thought.  Where  conservative 
theology  has  rejected  or  ignored  modern  tendencies, 

184 


Theology  and  Recent  Philosophy 

it  has  generally  been  after  examining  them, 
deliberately  preferring  the  metaphysics  of  the 
schools,  be  those  schools  Greek,  mediaeval  or 
Scottish.  On  the  other  hand,  the  influence  of 
modern  thought  can  be  traced  in  a  large  section 
of  our  decidedly  conservative  theology,  and  this 
is  conspicuously  true  of  Hegelianism.  There  is 
a  by  no  means  rare  type  of  nineteenth  century 
orthodox  theology  which  claims  a  direct  descent 
from  Calvin  and  the  Puritans,  but  needs  a  Hegelian 
key  for  its  correct  understanding ;  which  discourses 
eloquently  of  the  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
but  calls  upon  a  Deus  ex  machind  in  the  shape  of  a 
Cairdian  Absolute  to  save  it  out  of  all  its  specula- 
tive distresses — a  situation  humorously  suggestive 
of  the  Lusiad  of  Camoens,  where  the  sinking 
mariners  call  upon  Christ,  but  it  is  Venus  who 
actually  comes  to  their  assistance.  Indeed,  the 
popular  assertion  that  modern  theologians  rejoice 
in  a  complacent  ignorance  and  ignoring  of  the 
wider  world  of  thought  is  extremely  limited  in  its 
application ;  and  it  would  be  much  nearer  the  truth 
to  say,  on  the  contrary,  that  what  they  have 
suffered  from  is  rather  an  insufficient  interest  in 
their  own  subject,  born  partly  of  a  righteous 
revolt  against  dogmatocracy,  and  partly  of  an 
infection  with  the  fashionable  virus  of  trivial 
religious  romanticism.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
modern  demand  for  a  more  generous  subjection  of 
theology  to  philosophical  influence  can  be  met 
by  the  counter-assertion  that  the  influence  of  a 

185 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

pragmatic  theology  has  gone  far  more  largely  to  the 
shaping  of  modern  philosophical  thought — at  least 
in  Protestant  countries — than  the  philosophers 
are  ready  to  admit.  We  must  insist  not  only  upon 
the  indubitable  importance  of  all  the  philosophies 
as  helpers  of  Christian  thought,  and  helpers  just 
in  proportion  as  they  do  not  aspire  to  control  it, 
but  also  upon  the  supreme  importance  of  theology 
for  the  philosophies  as  mediating  a  revelation 
which  no  scheme  of  speculative  thought  can 
secure; and  which  has  developed  and  is  developing 
all  the  great  philosophies.  It  is  for  the  latter 
reason  even  more  than  for  the  former,  that  theo- 
logians and  philosophers  cannot  afford  to  sulk  in 
their  respective  camps. 

To  give  a  few  illustrations  of  the  influence  of  a 
despised  theology  upon  an  ambitious  and  fiercely 
independent  young  philosophy  is  not  difficult. 
Beginning  with  the  reaction  against  a  blind  and 
fatuous  culture-worship,  we  find,  for  instance,  that 
Ibsen,  whose  moral  mordancy  and  ethical  realism 
have  perhaps  done  more  to  open  men's  eyes  to  the 
hollowness  and  viciousness  of  our  belauded  social 
system  and  of  our  religious  conventions  than  any 
other  single  force,  was  most  crucially  influenced 
by  a  philosopher  who  was  first  of  all  a  theologian 
— Soren  Kierkegaard,  whose  thought  inspired 
"  Brand."  Nothing  in  all  the  literature  of  revolt 
against  the  steam-roller  we  call  "  Christian  " 
civilisation  bites  quite  so  deeply  as  Kierkegaard's 
theological   protest,   which   starts   not   from   the 

186 


Theology  and  Recent  Philosophy 

emotional  and  aspiring  individual  whose  fiery 
spirit  can  no  longer  brook  the  brutality  of  the 
gigantic  monster  man  has  created  for  his  own 
destruction,  but  from  the  believer,  who,  having 
been  driven  to  God  by  the  hounds  of  sin  and 
remorse,  chooses,  or  rather  finds  himself  in  the 
great  "  Either-Or,"  and  stands  a  redeemed 
personality  contra  tnundum.  He  defies  convention, 
not  with  the  aesthetic  fury  of  the  Nietzschean 
superman  which  ends  in  dashing  itself  to  pieces 
against  the  steel-ribbed  monster,  but  with  the 
spiritual  passion  of  the  forgiven  soul,  through 
whose  tears  the  world's  values — aye,  and  many  of 
the  Church's  values — are  seen  as  dust  and  worm- 
wood, and  the  reality  of  whose  penitence  acts  as  a 
corrosive  acid  upon  the  illusions  of  a  trivial  and 
specious  civilisation. 

Take  again  that  recognition  of  the  truth-value 
of  Christian  experience  which  is  so  characteristic 
of  modern  philosophy.  A  true  philosophy  of  life 
must  include  at  the  least  a  consideration  of  religion 
as  a  great  world-historical  movement,  and  we  find 
Eucken,  for  instance,  bringing  a  great  deal  of  his 
energy  to  bear  upon  a  very  thorough  study  of 
Church  history,  or  rather,  of  the  history  of  dogma. 
And  if  we  turn  to  the  three  illustrious  names  in 
that  field — Neander,  Dorner  and  Harnack — we 
find  that  all  these  three  have  adumbrated  the 
modern  psychological  movement,  connected  for 
us  with  the  name  of  William  James,  which 
virtually  views  the  experience  of  redemption  as 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

the  critical  factor  in  religion,  at  once  the  source  and 
the  criterion  of  doctrine.  Had  Eucken's  absolutist 
standpoint  permitted  him  to  follow  the  tendency 
of  these  great  Church  historians,  he  would 
have  given  us  the  most  constructive  book  on 
religious  philosophy  we  have  had  as  yet.  To 
positive  theologians  the  new  philosophical  interest 
in  religious  experience  will  seem  but  a  belated 
acquiescence  in  what  they  have  long  stood  for. 
Take  this  typical  passage  from  Neander  : — "  The 
fact  of  the  redemption  of  sinful  man  through 
Christ  constitutes  the  central  point  of  Christianity. 
It  was  from  the  influence  which  the  reception  of 
this  fact  could  not  fail  to  exert  on  the  inward  life 
of  man  that  this  new  shaping  of  the  religious 
consciousness  developed  itself  ;  and  hence  pro- 
ceeded, in  the  next  place,  the  gradual  regeneration 
in  the  habits  of  thinking  so  far  as  they  were 
connected  directly  or  indirectly  with  religion." 
What  else  is  this  but  the  anticipation  of  the 
psychological  method  applied  to  religion,  which 
is  likely  to  issue  in  the  development  of  an  autono- 
mous psychology  of  religion,  which  will  in  turn 
react  in  a  revolutionary  manner  upon  systematic 
theology  ?  Or  if,  instead  of  selecting  one  of  the 
many  passages  from  Dorner  that  crowd  to  one's 
mind  in  this  connection,  we  take  the  characteristic 
and  distinguishing  clause  of  the  Nicene  Creed — 
"  Who  for  us  men  and  for  our  salvation  came  down 
from  heaven  " — we  see  in  it  not  only  the  leit-motif 
of  Dorner's  noble  reading  of  Church  history  and 

1 88 


Theology  and  Recent  Philosophy 

lay  our  finger  upon  the  animating  pulse  of  all 
Christian  thought,  but  we  also  realise  once  again 
that  philosophy  might  well  have  spared  itself  much 
toilsome  groping  and  fumbling  at  the  skirts  of  the 
religious  problem,  had  it  not  been  so  disastrously 
self-sufficient.  In  Harnack's  massive  volumes, 
again,  we  have  a  brilliant  and  penetrative  treat- 
ment of  the  same  thesis  :  that  the  certitudo  salutis 
is  the  vital  principle,  lacking  which,  dogmatic 
speculation  has  invariably  fallen  dead  upon  the 
twilight  shores  of  history.  Thus,  "  Lucian  and 
Arius  worked  out  their  theory  without  a  genuine 
thought  of  redemption,"  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
"  Athanasius's  doctrine  had  only  one  tenet — God 
Himself  had  entered  humanity.  It  is  rooted 
wholly  in  the  thought  of  redemption."  And 
reading  the  history  of  dogma  through  the  simple 
and  candid,  yet  so  deeply  penetrative,  eyes  of 
Neander,  and  the  massive  and  opulent  mind  of 
Dorner,  and  the  trenchant  and  divining  tempera- 
ment of  Harnack,  we  seem  to  see  before  us  a 
Lutheran  Bergson  saying,  "  If  you  could  only  for 
a  moment  place  yourselves  in  the  centre  of  that 
spiritual  life-flux  we  call  the  experience  of 
redemption,  gentlemen.  .  .  ."  Yes,  it  is 
Bergsonism  anticipated.  Start  with  the  movement 
of  the  redemptive  experience  in  the  soul,  and  you 
may  dogmatise  to  your  heart's  content  ;  nay,  you 
must  dogmatise  if  this  experience  is  to  be  made 
operative  in  this  hard,  practical  world  of  ours. 
But  start  with  dogma,  like  Arius  and  Lucian,  like 

189 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

nearly  all  the  Gnostics,  with  the  notable  exception 
of  Marcion  and  a  few  of  the  lesser  lights,  like 
the  Rationalists  and  the  speculatively  orthodox 
schools  in  England  and  Germany,  and  you  will 
find  yourselves  making  arbitrary  patterns  with  the 
broken  splinters  which  were  once  a  whirling 
star. 

Coming  to  the  great  ethicising  movement  in 
philosophy  with  its  recognition  of  the  primacy  of 
the  moral  in  knowledge,  we  again  see  theology 
outstripping  its  swift-footed  sister  in  the  Ritschlian 
movement.  The  Ritschlian  value- judgment 
preceded  Eucken's  activism,  and  while  theology 
has  passed  beyond  the  Ritschlian  position  which 
its  perverse  and  despairing  attitude  towards 
metaphysics  left  suspended  somewhat  in  the  air, 
philosophy  has  not  yet  quite  got  there.  It 
knows  as  yet  only  the  self-realisation  of  the 
redeemed  personality  in  action  ;  it  has  no  room 
for  the  self-revelation  of  the  Redeemer  in  action, 
and  the  soul's  experience  of  it  as  the  only  "  spiritual 
immediacy "  possible  in  a  world  where  things 
happen  and  do  not  merely  evolve  themselves. 
That  the  personality  can  only  touch  and  know  the 
Super-personality  through  and  in  the  redeeming 
actus  fiurus  of  the  latter  is  an  implication  of 
activism  which  theology  drew  before  the  philo- 
sophical label  was  invented.  But  here  again  we 
find  an  actual,  though  quite  indirect,  anticipation 
of  Bergson's  fundamental  principle.  Most  of  us 
remember  a  type  of  ad  cafitandum  apologetics  in 

190 


Theology  and  Recent  Philosophy 

vogue  during  the  latter  part  of  last  century,  and 
by  no  means  quite  extinct  yet — the  attempt  to 
"  prove  "  the  truth  of  Christianity,  and,  what  is 
still  more  wonderful,  the  Divine  nature  of  its 
Founder,  by  what  is  sometimes  called  "  the  witness 
of  the  centuries,"  with  their  Gesta  Christi  and  their 
long  roll  of  illustrious  believers.  Following  this 
strange  argument  to  its  logical  conclusion,  it  would 
appear  that  the  further  back  we  go,  the  less  "  proof  " 
we  can  adduce  for  the  truth  of  Christianity  ;  that, 
e.g.,  in  the  fourth  century  the  doctrine  of  the 
Divinity  of  Christ  must  have  rested  on  somewhat 
slender  and  shaky  foundations,  while  in  the  first 
century  it  could  only  be  accepted  by  naive 
subjectivists  without  the  historical  sense — by 
Ritschlians  like  Peter,  John,  and  Paul,  who  were 
content  to  venture  upon  a  value-judgment,  while 
soundly  objective  and  philosophical  thinkers 
like  Gamaliel  wisely  decided  to  suspend  their 
judgment  and  await  the  verdict  of  the  centuries. 
It  is  at  this  point  that  Bergson  joins  hands  with 
the  pragmatic  theologian.  "Await  the  verdict  of 
the  centuries  ?  "  he  would  say.  "  But  life  can't  be 
'  judged,'  it  must  be  '  lived.'  It  rolls  through 
each  century,  nay,  through  each  minute,  as  a 
new  creation,  a  surprise  to  which  no  measures  of 
the  balancing  reason  are  adequate.  It  must  be 
ventured  upon  by  you  as  it  was  ventured  upon  by 
the  first  man,  and  though  millions  have  stepped 
into  that  stream  before  you,  you  are  still  (strange 
as  that  may  seem  to  you)  the  first  that  ever  stepped 

191 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

in,  and  it  is  only  by  touching  its  depth  and  force 
in  a  lonely  and  unaided  venture  that  you  can 
touch  it  at  all." 

But  all  this  does  not  mean  that  theology  can 
afford  to  sit  in  the  teacher's  chair,  and  dole  out 
as  much  of  its  ripe  wisdom  as  a  docile  philosophy 
will  accept.  On  the  contrary,  it  also  has  much, 
very  much,  to  learn  from  the  recent  thought- 
movements. 

In  the  protest  against  a  material  civilisation  and 
a  merely  aesthetic  culture,  for  instance,  both 
philosophy  and  literature  are  still  miles  ahead  of 
Christian  teaching.  Ibsen,  for  example,  is  by  no 
means  "  a  back  number  "  for  Christian  thought. 
We  are  only  just  beginning  to  realise  that  God 
can  be  neither  wheedled  nor  bullied.  We  still 
tend  to  treat  all  that  goes  by  the  name  of  "  love  " 
as  Divine,  all  culture  as  "  Christian,"  and  all 
conventions  as  moral  imperatives.  We  have  not 
yet  quite  realised  that  culture  needs  to  be 
redeemed  as  much  as  degradation,  and  that  the 
Cross  shatters  not  only  the  selfish,  unscrupulous, 
cruel  life  of  a  world  with  its  back  to  God,  but  also 
many  sweet,  sentimental  and  truly  charming 
aspects  of  our  so-called  Christian  civilisation, 
just  as  it  shattered  the  sentimental,  solicitous 
friendship  that  cried,  "  Be  that  far  from  thee, 
Lord,"  and  the  domestic  affection  which,  beaten 
back  with  stern  yet  loving  hands,  said,  "  He  is 
beside  himself."  No  Christian  teacher  has 
emphasised    this    aspect    of    things    with    more 

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Theology  and  Recent  Philosophy 

mordancy  and  verve  than  Principal  Forsyth,  and 
if  the  philosophical  verdict  of  dissatisfaction  with 
the  poor  contribution  of  modern  civilisation  to 
man's  spiritual  life  is  taking  on  among  ourselves 
a  deeper  and  more  keen-edged  form  in  a  Christian 
criticism  of  modern  spiritual  cults  and  tendencies, 
it  is  largely  owing  to  his  weighty  and  impelling 
insistence. 

There  is,  however,  an  obverse  side  to  what  one 
may  call  the  Forsythian  criticism  of  conventional 
and  aesthetic  religious  culture.  There  is  a 
terrible  Deus  non  irridetur  written  up,  not  only 
over  our  moral  superficiality,  but  over  our  mis- 
applied moral  stringency,  over  our  Puritanism  as 
well  as  over  our  laxity.  If  we  have  missed  the 
moral  poignancy  of  the  Cross  and  the  inscrutable 
sternness  of  Grace,  we  have  also  missed  that  simple 
playfulness  and  childlike  sweetness,  that  rosy 
freshness  of  joy  and  bold  homeliness  of  intimacy 
which  are  the  other  half  of  Calvary.  If  we  have  not 
sounded  the  depths  of  penitence  and  holy  judg- 
ment, it  is  also  true  that 

We  know  not  how  our  God  can  play 

The  babe's,  the  brother's,  part ; 
We  know  not  all  the  ways  He  has 

Of  getting  at  the  heart. 

Our  Protestant  religious  culture  especially  has 
been  somewhat  slow  in  learning  "  with  simple 
souls  to  play  love's  crafty  part,"  and  "  love's 
forwardness  "  is  an  offence  to  its  sophisticated 
mind.     In    contending    for    a    theology    which 

193 

13 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

measures  the  situation  on  the  racial  scale  and  at 
its  central  depth,  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that 
to  make  such  a  theology  narrowly  stauro-centric 
has  tended  to  create  a  soil  upon  which  the  flower 
of  spiritual  joy  and  intimacy  cannot  grow.  That 
such  a  theology  should  so  often  be  found  to 
co-exist  with  a  lack  of  the  evangelic  spirit  and  a 
conventional  view  of  the  Church's  function  is 
by  no  means  accidental,  and  it  is  here,  no  less 
than  in  the  region  of  a  sentimental  religion  of 
divine  Fatherhood,  that  a  stringent  critique  of 
our  Christian  culture  and  ethic  is  needed. 

And  this  point  leads  us  on  to  the  second  great 
element  in  modern  thought — the  emphasis  upon 
religious  experience.  It  is  precisely  here  that  all 
our  theologies  seem  to  break  down,  the  speculative 
"  new  "  ones  a  little  more,  the  positive  dogmatic 
ones  a  little  less.  We  have  with  us  to-day,  though 
already  in  its  decadence,  a  type  of  theologising 
which  starts  from  a  mixture  of  philosophemes,  and 
then  tries  to  fit  the  Christ  into  a  mosaic  frame 
wrought  chiefly  with  Neo-Platonist,  Buddhist  and 
Hegelian  fragments,  and  its  character  is  too 
obviously  unexperimental  to  need  detailed  dis- 
cussion. The  other  type  of  theology,  however, 
which  we  may  describe  as  narrowly  Pauline,  does 
start  from  experience — from  what  it  calls  the 
"  classic  "  type  of  Christian  experience — with 
that  of  Paul  as  the  paradigm.  And  it  not  only 
starts  from  that  "  classic  "  form  of  the  experience 
of  redemption,  but  ends  with  it  too  ;    in  fact,  it 

194 


Theology  and  Recent  Philosophy 

makes  it  the  only  universal  form,  and  conveniently 
excludes  all  variations  as  too  individual,  and  casual, 
and  provincial  to  call  for  consideration  from 
a  theology  dealing  with  the  whole  situation  on  the 
racial  scale.  It  generally  includes  a  more  Roman 
than  Protestant  conception  of  a  dcpositum  fidei 
once  for  all  committed  to  the  Church — a  term 
which  sometimes  stands  for  "  the  Gospel,"  at 
others  for  that  classic  experience  of  redemption. 
But  while  the  experience  of  redemption  has  such 
a  continuity  and  unity  that  the  most  modern  of 
the  moderns  is  conscious  of  a  central  kinship  with 
Paul,  we  cannot  look  upon  the  Pauline  experience 
as  a  paradigm  in  the  sense  of  dismissing  every 
deviation  from  it  as  "  irregular,"  and  idiosyncratic. 
To  maintain  such  a  position  would  be  to  make 
Paul  the  measure  of  Christ's  redeeming  personality- 
No  single  age  can  exhaust  the  experience  of 
redemption,  and  a  theology  which  professes  to  be 
based  upon  that  experience  must  take  the  modern 
as  well  as  the  Pauline  into  its  most  serious  con- 
sideration. And  that  modern  experience  is  a 
sense  and  conviction  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God, 
conceived  not  in  the  one-sided  poetic  way  of  the 
past  century,  but,  shall  we  say,  a  Fatherhood  as 
wise  and  tender  as  that  which  inspired  George 
Macdonald's  faith,  yet  rooted  not  in  domestic 
parenthood,  but  in  the  tragic  Deus  Caritatis 
of  "  Brand  "  ?  Shall  we  risk  being  misunderstood 
by  saying  that  such  an  experience  will  have 
something  of  Chestertonian   humour  and  gaiete 

195 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

de  cceur,  as  well  as  the  childlike  affection  and 
intimacy  conveyed  by  Father  Faber's  artless 
hymns,  just  because  it  has  stood  on  Calvary  and 
because  it  lives  in  the  searching  light  of  "  the 
four  last  things  "  ?  To  the  specifically  Pauline 
theology  this  will  appear  mere  verbiage,  simply 
because  such  a  theology  refers  everything  to  the 
"  classic  "  experience,  just  as  Eucken  refers 
religion  as  a  whole  to  the  absolute  spiritual  life, 
and  does  not  study  its  actual  origin  in  the 
individual  soul.  But  a  theology  which  is  truly 
"experimental"  will  examine  all  these  "deviat- 
ing "  experiences  of  the  modern  soul,  and,  wherever 
such  experiences  are  really  typical  and  not  merely 
individual,  will  seek  to  trace  in  them  a  new 
creative  revelation  of  the  Christ  as  Redeemer. 

And  such  a  view  is  not  nearly  as  "  subjective  " 
and  merely  psychological  as  it  looks  to  the 
narrowly  Pauline  mind.  It  has  its  justification  in 
a  part  of  the  eternal  Gospel  which  this  type  of 
theology  strangely  reduces  to  a  mere  mild  prelimin- 
ary to  Paulinism  which  may  safely  be  ignored — the 
earthly  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus.  Modern 
Paulinism,  not  content  with  emphasizing  the 
fact  that  that  teaching  was  only  preserved 
through  a  Church  based  upon  the  apostolic 
experience  and  that  Jesus  Himself  was  not  always 
perfectly  certain  and  clearly  conscious  of  His 
nature  and  work,  proceeds  to  the  assumption  that 
the  apostolic  mind  saw  clearly  where  His  vision 
was  dim,  and  could  interpret   Him  better  than 

196 


Theology  and  Recent  Philosophy 

He  had  interpreted  Himself  in  the  days  of  His 
flesh.  To  call  this  superior  apostolic  insight 
"  the  posthumous  work  of  Christ  "  is  not  to  mend 
matters.  We  cannot,  indeed,  read  the  Gospel 
story  truly  except  in  the  light  of  the  Cross,  and 
in  the  light  not  only  of  apostolic,  but  of  all  Christian 
experience  ;  but  we  must  read  it  in  that  light,  not 
ignore  it  on  account  of  that  light.  And  if  it  is 
through  such  a  renewed  reading  of  the  life 
and  teaching  of  Jesus  that  the  modern  experi- 
ence of  a  redeeming  Fatherhood  is  possible, 
then  the  theology  which  sets  it  aside  as  merely 
occasional  and  casual  is  neither  a  theology  of  the 
Word  nor  of  the  soul ;  it  comes  short  both  of  the 
objective  standard  and  of  the  psychological 
facts.  Certain  it  is  that  the  new  philosophic 
emphasis  on  religious  experience  and  the  new 
psychological  particularity  which  studies  individual 
biography  (just  as  Bergsonism  plunges  into  life 
as  it  flows  past  in  all  its  multiplicity  and  confusion, 
instead  of  declining  upon  supposedly  general 
principles,  typical  instances  and  normative  lines 
of  development)  need  to  be  taken  more  seriously 
into  account  by  theologians  to  whom  Paul  is  becom- 
ing a  tyrannous  and  hieratic  convention,  as  well  as 
by  "  new  "  theologians  who  start  with  alien 
metaphysical  conceptions. 

It  is  frequently  objected  that  such  a  method 
is  altogether  too  "  subjective."  Neither  faith 
nor  theology  can  be  founded  on  individual 
experience  ;  we  must  have  an  objective  authority 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

to  carry  our  conviction.  This  is  undoubtedly 
true,  if  by  individual  experience  we  mean  sub- 
jective emotionalism  detached  from  history  and 
from  the  collective  Christian  consciousness  ;  if 
we  exclude  the  consciousness  of  the  "  otherness  " 
of  God  from  religious  experience.  But, 
defining  that  experience  as  including  a  non-self 
as  well  as  a  self,  an  objective  as  well  as  a  subjective, 
a  Transcendental  as  well  as  an  Immanental,  the 
objection  surely  loses  its  force.  Moreover,  not 
one  of  the  theologians  who  stand  for  this  principle 
of  an  "  objective  "  authority  has  quite  succeeded 
in  giving  a  satisfactory  definition  of  its  nature,  or 
in  establishing  its  validity  for  us.  Thus  Dr. 
Forsyth,  in  his  invaluable  Yale  lectures, *  after 
taking  great  pains  to  make  it  clear  that  that 
authority  is  not  to  be  sought  for  in  the  Bible,  not 
even  in  the  teaching  of  Christ,  the  impressiveness 
of  His  personality,  or  the  authority  of  His  beliefs, 
leaves  us  with  the  moral  authority  of  Christ  in 
the  conscience  as  its  redeemer,  regenerator  and 
new  creator.  But  if  the  authority  of  Christ  is 
thus  not  only  objective  but  inward,  how  can  it 
be  known  and  proved  except  just  in  that  conscience 
which  it  redeems,  that  experience  which  it  creates  ? 
The  desire  to  preserve  both  the  experi- 
ential and  the  narrowly  historical  and  dogmatic 
points  of  view  has  given  birth  to  a  type  of 
theological  teaching  which  takes  away  with  one 
hand  what  it  gives  with  the  other.     An  apparently 

1  Positive  Preaching  and  Modern  Mind,  Lecture  II. 
198 


Theology  and  Recent  Philosophy 

remote,  but  really  acutely  relevant,  instance  of 
this  is  found  in  Dr.  James  Denney's  magnum  opus 
"  Jesus  and  the  Gospel,"  where  he  pleads  for  the 
abolition  of  credal  formulae  in  favour  of  a  simple 
"experiential"  expression  of  faith,  "I  believe  in 
God  through  Jesus  Christ  His  only  Son,  our  Lord 
and  Saviour,"  and  then  proceeds  to  define  that 
expression  in  a  sense  grounded  upon  the  objective 
authority   of  the   total   testimony   of   the    New 
Testament   writers   to   the   Person   and   work   of 
Christ,  and  more  especially  upon  Christ's  testimony 
to    Himself.     But    if    the    experiential    point    of 
view   is   really  taken,   it   is   obvious   that   quite 
apart  from  any  critical  objections  to  Dr.  Denney's 
position    regarding    the    genuineness    of    certain 
words  of  Jesus,  we  cannot  admit  the  authoritative 
significance  of  the  self-testimony  of  Jesus,  how- 
ever  historically   secured,    for   our   faith.     Only 
on  an  assumption  directly  opposed  to  Dr.  Denney's 
conviction,    viz.,   the    assumption   that    Jesus    is 
not   a   present   Saviour,  but   merely  a  historical 
and  theological   figure,  could  the   modern   mind 
ground  a  certain  faith,  or  rather  belief,  upon  His 
historically   unimpeachable   testimony.     Granted 
a  living,  present  Christ,  present  experience  of  His 
redeeming  action  must  be  its  own  witness,  stand 
upon  its  own  independent  and  inward  certitude 
to    which    any    historical    testimony    is    only    a 
corroborative    adjunct.      Again,    admitting    the 
validity  of  Dr.   Denney's  historical  and  Biblical 
data,   the  shortness   and  simplicity  of  his   new 

199 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

creed  do  not  make  it  one  whit  less  external  and 
oppressive,  for  behind  it  and  underneath  it  is  a 
complicated  and  elaborate  justification  on  the 
basis  and  authority  of  certain  historical  facts  ; 
and  with  such  a  weight  of  Christological  dogma 
it  makes  very  little  difference  whether  the  "  creed  " 
is  a  little  longer  or  a  little  shorter  :  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  a  detailed  dogmatic  confession  of  faith  would, 
under  the  circumstances,  be  the  "  simpler  "  of 
the  two. 

But  it  must  not  be  concluded  that  the  theology 
of  the  future,  starting  from  the  method  of 
psychological  particularity,  will  be  unhistorical 
in  the  sense  of  Schmiedel's  assertion  that  even  if 
he  were  forced  to  conclude  that  Jesus  had  never 
lived,  His  faith  would  remain  unimpaired.  On 
the  contrary,  a  study  of  religious  experience  such 
as  recent  philosophical  thought  indicates  for 
theology  will  go  to  intensify  the  conviction  that 
the  power  which  creates  the  Christian  conscious- 
ness is  none  other  than  the  power  that  entered 
the  history  of  the  race  in  Christ  Jesus.  Further, 
though  we  may  admit  that  the  individual's  faith 
may  be  maintained  apart  from  belief  in  the 
historic  Christ,  modern  thought  insists  upon  the 
solidarity  of  the  race,  and  the  collective  Christian 
experience  is  certainly  based  upon  the  Christ  of 
history,  whatever  may  be  true  of  individuals 
here  and  there.  And  if  that  is  so,  the  individual 
consciousness  which  forms  part  of  the  communal 
cannot  in  the  long  run  remain  entirely  unaffected 

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Theology  and  Recent  Philosophy 

by  the  removal  of  that  historical  basis.  All  we 
contend  for  is  that  while  God  came  to  us  in  history, 
we  who  have  gained  a  practical  conviction  of  the 
autonomy  and  self-evidencing  character  of 
religious  experience  cannot  subject  it  to  a  historical 
tribunal,  or  lay  upon  the  details  of  the  life  and 
words  of  Jesus,  however  firmly  attested,  a  weight 
they  are  not  warranted  to  bear.  The  psycho- 
logical movement  in  theology  has  suffered  mis- 
interpretation through  being  identified  with  the 
work  of  William  James.  Against  his  interpreta- 
tion of  Christian  experience,  valuable  as  it  is, 
the  objection  of  subjectivism  may  be  urged. 
But  a  soundly  "  psychological  theology,"  if  that 
term  may  be  used  without  risk  of  misunder- 
standing, insists  upon  the  authority  of  the  soul's 
present  intuitions  of  truth  and  grace,  not  because 
the  Christ  of  history  is  irrelevant  to  our  experience 
of  redemption,  but  because  every  soul  that 
believeth  is  contemporaneous  with  Him. 

Bearing  the  Ritschlian  influence  in  mind,  it 
would  appear  at  first  sight  that  theology  has 
little  to  learn  from  that  great  ethicising  movement 
which  forms,  perhaps,  the  most  important 
element  in  modern  thought.  Theology,  indeed, 
as  has  been  shown  already,  insisted  upon  the 
primacy  of  the  moral  long  before  Pragmatism 
and  Activism  were  heard  of.  Yet  it  has  far  more 
to  learn  even  here  than  is  supposed,  and  that 
in  two  directions.  On  the  one  hand,  it  has  failed 
to  carry  the  implications  of  its  principle  to  their 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

legitimate  consequences  ;  on  the  other,  the 
moralisation  of  theology,  especially  as  found  in 
Ritschlianism,  has  tended  to  an  irrationalism  far 
more  pronounced  than  the  slightly  irrationalistic 
tendency  of  Eucken's  Activism. 

An  ethicised  theology  true  to  its  central  principle 
cannot  afford  to  approach  the  evolutionary  type. 
If  the  call  of  Jesus  be  a  call  to  repentance,  if  His 
appeal  be  not  to  the  pro  and  contra  of  speculative 
reason,  but  to  the  power  of  moral  choice,  then 
clearly  there  must  be  two  alternatives  to  choose 
between  :  there  must  be  a  cleavage  in  man's  being 
necessitating  a  clean  break  with  one  of  two  courses. 
Much  of  our  present-day  teaching,  while  insisting 
upon  the  moral  imperative  of  Jesus,  makes  it  a 
mere  echo  of  our  own  aspirations,  ascribes  to 
mankind  in  general  the  anima  naturaliter 
Christiana,  and  thus  produces  an  effect  very  like 
that  of  a  certain  popular  evangelist,  who  told  a 
story  of  a  merry  company  of  people  suddenly 
rushing  out  of  the  house,  and  trampling  one  another 
down  in  panic-stricken  confusion,  but  forgot  to 
say  that  the  house  was  on  fire.  It  is  here  that 
Eucken's  negative  movement  with  its  connota- 
tion of  conversion  comes  as  a  preacher  of  repent- 
ance to  an  inconsequent  theology.  Over  and  over 
again  he  uses  language  which  could  be  used  from 
any  Christian  pulpit  without  the  slightest  modifica- 
tion, and  it  is  significant  to  note  how  in  recent 
times  philosophy  has  restored  to  honour  terms 
which  a  certain  type   of  theology  is  somewhat 

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Theology  and  Recent  Philosophy 

reluctant  to  use.  Turn  to  Eucken  and  you  find 
the  struggle  for  a  concrete  spiritual  experience 
represented  as  a  struggle  between  world-powers 
engaged  in  a  titanic  conflict  for  the  soul  of  man,  as 
a  dread  choice  between  two  clearly  opposing  prin- 
ciples, between  the  pettily  human  and  selfish  and 
the  absolute  spiritual  life.  Turn  to  a  type  of 
theology  prevalent  to-day,  and  you  will  find  the 
struggle  represented  as  the  victory  of  the  soul  which 
has  an  overwhelming  affinity  with  Christ,  and  is, 
indeed,  His  counterpart,  over  that  "  ape  and  tiger  " 
which  are  the  survivals  of  an  earlier  stage  of 
evolution,  and  which  must  disappear  in  time.  It 
is  in  Eucken,  not  in  such  theology,  that  we  breathe 
a  New  Testament  atmosphere,  and  divine  the 
reality  of  the  light  that  shineth  in  darkness,  and 
of  the  darkness  that  comprehendeth  it  not.  His 
philosophy  in  what  may  be  called  its  fundamental 
aspect  reflects  the  antagonism  between  love  and 
sin  which  makes  the  story  of  the  life  of  Jesus  so 
exasperating  to  the  candid  pagan  soul  that  has 
not  been  blunted  by  that  prettified  convention 
of  it  known  as  "  the  Galilean  Gospel."  If  there 
is  anything  at  all  in  our  vaunted  ethicising  of 
theology,  it  is  that  Jesus  came  with  an  ethical 
demand  which  not  only  created  a  new  type  of 
goodness,  but  also  initiated  a  new  and  unpre- 
cedentedly  grim  moral  struggle  ;  which  evoked 
not  only  a  new  spiritual  vision,  but  also  revealed 
an  implacable  enmity  and  rage  ;  which  was  not 
only  satisfying,  but  also  irritative.     We   may — 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

such  is  our  power  of  manipulating  thought — so 
mediate  the  Christ  to  the  intellect  that  even  His 
Cross  is  no  longer  a  foolishness.  But  the  stuff 
of  our  moral  and  spiritual  nature  is  not  so  plastic, 
and  it  is  only  by  sheer  juggling  that  we  can  get 
rid  of  that  "  offence  "  which  is  the  moral  and 
spiritual  counterpart  of  the  metaphysical  concept, 
doubt.  Nay,  our  very  attempts  to  get  rid  of  it 
prove  that  the  centuries  have  not  weakened  its 
provocative  and  collisive  force. 

To  restore  the  great  "  Either-Or  "  to  theology 
may  be  the  most  important  effect  of  the  present 
powerful  impact  of  the  new  Idealism  upon  it. 
Much  of  our  popular  preaching  and  writing 
exhibits  what  is  but  another  aspect  of  that  appeal 
to  the  witness  of  the  centuries,  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  is  both  bad  history  and  bad  metaphysics, 
not  to  speak  of  bad  theology.  It  tells  us,  in 
effect,  to  rejoice  in  the  triumph  of  Christ's  Person 
and  teaching  over  the  race.  For  a  little  while  He 
was  despised  and  rejected.  His  contemporaries 
misunderstood  Him  and  meted  out  cruel  injustice 
to  Him,  but  soon  the  judgment  of  humanity 
recovered  its  balance.  History  has  vindicated 
Him,  and  to-day  He  is  Lord  of  the  best  of  our 
race.  But  if  we  have  any  but  the  flattest  Socinian 
conception  of  Christ,  we  must  ask,  Did  He  ever 
stand  at  the  judgment  bar  of  history  ?  Does  He 
— the  despised  and  rejected  Jesus — not  follow 
the  ages  and  accompany  every  generation,  not 
to  be  judged  by  it,  but  to  judge  it  ?     And  if  so, 

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Theology  and  Recent  Philosophy 

what  can  be  His  verdict  on  a  generation  that 
dares  to  say,  "  We  have  vindicated  Him." 
If  that  "  offence  "  was  not  an  accident,  but  the 
necessary  consequence  of  love  coming  to  a  sinful 
world,  of  truth  coming  to  a  conventional,  mediocre, 
insincere  world  ;  if  it  is  the  supreme  demonstra- 
tion that  love  and  truth  cannot  come  into  this 
world  without  suffering,  then  is  it  not  true  also 
that  the  theology  which  eliminates  the  "  offence  " 
eliminates  salvation  ?  And  once  more,  if  the 
modern  religious  mind,  encouraged  by  Eucken's 
interpretation  of  history  and  by  Bergson's  call  to 
plunge  into  the  living  stream  of  reality,  recognises 
that  it  is  of  the  essence  of  faith  to  become  contem- 
poraneous with  Jesus,  then  the  "  offence  "  must 
be  present — especially  at  the  cross-roads  of  the 
soul,  which  Eucken  calls  the  great  "  Either-Or." 
It  may  be  the  impetus  to  rejection,  it  may  be  the 
occasion  of  faith  ;  one  might  say  that,  except  in 
the  case  of  undeveloped  souls,  he  who  does  not 
know  what  it  is  to  be  "  offended,"  does  not 
know  what  it  is  really  to  believe.  And  this 
"  offence,"  be  it  noted  in  passing,  is  not  to  be 
narrowly  defined  in  reference  to  the  Cross.  It 
follows  the  simple  human  life  of  Jesus,  and  is  most 
poignant  and  tragic,  not  for  the  alien  Pharisee, 
but  for  the  would-be  disciple.  And  while 
"  Blessed  is  he  whosoever  shall  not  be  offended 
in  Me,"  is  becoming  a  faint  and  all  but  illegible 
blur  over  the  entrance-gate  to  faith,  philosophy 
is  ever  more  boldly  writing  it  up  over  its  portals  ; 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

and  it  is  surely  significant  that  Eucken,  whose 
undogmatic  Christianity  precludes  the  "  offence  " 
in  our  sense  of  the  term,  should  see  in  the  race  so 
deep-seated  an  antagonism  to  good  that  conver- 
sion is  the  only  term  which  adequately  describes 
his  "  negative  movement." 

But  there  is  yet  another  sense  in  which  the 
ethicising  of  theology  has  remained  incomplete, 
and  here  Eucken  can  help  us  only  by  implications 
which  he  himself  does  not  admit,  while  Bergson 
supplies  us  with  valuable  principles,  whose 
implications  he  has  not  yet  developed.  While 
the  influence  of  Ritschl  has  made  the  insistence 
upon  a  historical  manifestation  of  God's  redeeming 
activity  almost  a  superstition  among  us,  we  are 
still  a  little  anxious  and  uncertain  as  to  how  such 
a  revelation  can  be  squared  with  science  and 
metaphysics.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  are  still 
under  the  action  of  the  Hegelian  microbe,  and 
inclined  to  be  almost  abjectly  apologetic  in  our 
attempts  to  commend  such  a  historical  crisis  as 
that  of  the  Cross  to  the  modern  mind  which  sees 
the  act  of  God  everywhere.  We  have  seen  already 
how  Bergson's  doctrine  of  creative  evolution 
does  away  at  one  sweep  with  this  type  of  attempts 
to  reconcile  the  historical  Incarnation  with 
the  theory  of  evolution.  Life  is  absolutely 
original  and  incalculable.  In  some  sciences, 
i.e.,  in  astronomy  or  chemistry,  discoveries  can 
be  anticipated  and  afterwards  brought  under 
general  laws  ;  in  biology  the  intelligence  is  baffled. 

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Theology  and  Recent  Philosophy 

Life  solves  its  own  problems  in  its  own  way. 
And  if  even  the  chlorophyl  action  of  plants 
shows  amid  much  fixity  some  freedom,  some 
element  of  the  incalculable,  how  much  more  will 
the  work  of  the  Saviour,  where  life  at  its  deepest 
and  at  its  supreme  potentiality  is  confronted  with 
its  crucial  problem,  present  aspects  which  only 
the  intuition  of  love  and  the  penetration  of  a 
stricken  conscience  can  apprehend. 

Again,  we  have  seen  how  Eucken's  Activism 
implies  the  very  thing  he  rejects  as  dogma — a 
supreme  redeeming  act  of  God  in  history — and  how 
his  conception  of  the  past  as  living  involves  the 
timeless  power  of  every  truly  moral  act.  And 
if  our  defective  insight  can  transform  the  past  and 
determine  the  future,  and  one  act  of  ours  can 
change  the  face  of  our  world  for  all  time,  they  must 
surely  be  grounded  upon  the  pardoning  insight 
and  the  crucial  action  of  God — the  insight 
expressing  itself  in  the  act.  Here  again,  Bergson's 
doctrine  of  concrete  time  comes  to  our  aid.  To 
quote  the  fine  words  of  Baron  von  Hiigel,  "  Since 
all  characteristically  human  values  and  ideals, 
indeed  the  very  notion  of  worth,  are  developed, 
captured  and  maintained,  not  in  time  but  in 
duration,  history  is  busy  with  realities,  which, 
at  bottom,  even  here  and  now,  are  not  in  time  at 
all."  It  will  be  seen  at  once  how  such  a  view 
rehabilitates  the  doctrine  of  the  Eternal  Priesthood 
of  Christ,  which  an  over-hasty  modernism  has 
relegated  to  the  scrap-heap  of  dogmatic  super- 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

stition.  For  what  do  this  and  cognate  doctrines 
imply  if  linked  up  with  recent  philosophical 
thought  ?  First,  that  God  is  so  intimate  with  us 
that  in  His  ethical  integrity  lies  our  spiritual  life, 
that  if  He  relaxed  for  one  moment  in  His  steady 
upholding  of  every  morally  precious  thing,  ideals 
would  perish  out  of  the  heart  of  man,  and  the 
race  would  go  down  to  darkness.  It  also  implies 
that  human  history  has  a  value  for  God,  and  that 
He  accompanies  it  with  a  sympathy  which  is  no 
mere  view  sub  specie  ceternitatis,  but  a  real 
participation,  an  attitude  which  is  modified  from 
moment  to  moment  by  the  actual  character  of 
that  history.  It  follows  that  for  a  race  that  has 
violated  the  moral  order,  there  can  be  no  refuge 
from  the  sense  of  guilt  in  the  indulgent  love  of  God, 
not  only  because  God's  love  is  incorruptibly 
ethical,  but  also  because  He  loves  the  persons 
whom  we  have  injured  with  a  love  so  passionate 
and  substitutionary  that  to  touch  them  is  to 
touch  the  apple  of  His  eye.  Only  in  one  way 
can  an  equation  with  the  moral  order  be  brought 
about — by  a  supreme  personal  act  of  God,  the 
maintaining  of  the  world's  moral  aim  within  the 
race  by  One  who  makes  God's  atoning  purpose 
His  own,  and  makes  it  available  for  the  race  as  a 
moral  possession  wrought  out  in  history.  And 
when  we  look  at  the  life  and  death  of  Jesus,  not 
with  the  purblindness  of  our  metaphysical  and 
theological  prepossessions,  but  vitally  and 
personally ;    when  we  feel  the  throb  of  His  great 

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Theology  and  Recent  Philosophy 

impulse  of  Saviourhood,  and  realise  His  absolute 
abandonment  to  that  impulse,  and  so  to  the  Holy 
Will  whose  expression  it  was,  can  we  doubt  that 
in  Him  something  has  come  to  the  race,  something 
has  been  actualised  within  it,  which  amounts  to  a 
creation  of  a  new  world  ?  Again,  if  we  view  Jesus 
as  the  central  heart  and  conscience  of  the  race  and 
as  the  soul's  Ideal  and  Higher  Self  ;  if  we  see  Him 
in  the  individual  experience  as  within  our 
consciousness  and  yet  not  completely  embraced 
by  it,  do  we  not  see  Him  there  too  as  the  One  who 
equates  us  morally  with  God,  the  great  High 
Priest  who  has  made  an  eternal  sacrifice  to  the 
Infinite  Right  and  the  Eternal  Reason  of  the 
Ideal  we  ought  to  be  ?  And  so  what  was  done 
once  for  all  in  time  becomes  a  present  eternal  fact 
for  all  time,  and  we  get  back  to  the  sublime 
conception  of  an  Eternal  Priesthood  of  Christ. 

Coming  now  to  the  irrationalism  of  our  moralised 
theology,  recent  philosophical  thought  offers  us 
at  least  the  rudimentary  material  for  a  doctrine 
of  the  spiritual  reason.  Even  Eucken's  irrational- 
ism is  only  apparent,  a  more  close  working  out  of 
his  theory  of  knowledge  being  all  that  is  needed 
to  make  it  disappear,  and  his  insistence  upon  a 
speculative  basis  for  religion  might  well  be 
considered  by  belated  Ritschlians  of  the  primitive 
type.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  irrationalism 
of  pragmatic  theology  was  necessitated  by  the 
course  of  Church  history,  and  has  exercised  a 
wholesome  corrective  function.     The  roots  of  this 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

tendency  lie  in  the  gigantic  conflict  with 
Gnosticism  at  the  dawn  of  Church  history,  when  a 
true  instinct  prompted  the  theologians  to  rescue 
Christian  thought  from  ultimate  secularisation 
by  setting  the  experience  of  salvation  high  in  a 
place  where  reason  could  never  come.  But  we  no 
longer  believe  that  personality  functions  in 
detachments,  and  that  when  the  soul  enters  the 
Holy  of  Holies  reason  must  wait  in  the  outer 
court.  We  believe  rather  that  the  whole  inner 
life  of  man  is  involved  in  every  psychosis. 
"  Whoever,"  says  Dorner,  "  reveres  Christianity 
as  accordant  with  the  highest  reason  must  also 
assume  a  progressive  unfolding  and  strengthening 
of  reason  through  the  power  of  Christianity,  and 
that  no  term  can  be  fixed  for  reason  in  this 
advance."  This  means  that  the  experience  of 
redemption  is  ultimately  not  only  an  ethical 
conversion,  but  a  spiritual  gnosis. 

And  further  still,  we  may  deduce  from  Bergson's 
doctrine  of  intuition  the  right  of  what  might  be 
called  an  ideal  dogmatic.  We  have  seen  that 
Bergson  by  no  means  undervalues  the  conceptual- 
ising faculty.  By  its  means  reality  is  made 
portable  and  available.  Applying  this  to  dogmatic 
theology  as  ordinarily  understood,  it  conveys  the 
warning  that  our  religious  experiences  and 
intuitions  will  tend  to  remain  sterile  and  ineffective, 
if  not  to  grow  blurred  and  finally  to  disappear, 
unless  the  dogmatising  instinct  be  allowed  its 
right,  unless  they  are  in  some  way  formulated  and 

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Theology  and  Recent  Philosophy 

conceptualised.  Illustrations  of  this  may  be 
found  in  the  present-day  vagueness  and  casualness 
of  religious  experience,  traceable  to  the  decay  of 
catechetical  and  dogmatic  instruction.  And  if 
Bergsonism  implies  a  "  reason  "  above  discursive 
thinking  ;  if  his  intuition,  at  least  in  one  aspect  of 
it,  may  be  understood  as  redeemed  reason,  then 
there  arises  a  demand  for  an  ideal  dogmatic  which 
shall  transcend  that  of  the  discursive  reason. 
And  this  means,  inter  alia,  that  the  apparent 
dualism  between  Christ  and  God  as  it  is  seen  in 
Ritschlianism  will  be  dissolved.  Arising  from  the 
inadequacy  of  the  logical  understanding,  it 
represents  no  real  distinction.'  It  is  only  one  more 
instance  of  that  originality  and  unexpectedness 
of  life  which  are  the  despair  of  discursive  thought. 
To  faith  Jesus  and  God  are  one.  But  as  we  have 
seen,  faith  is  only  another  name  for  that  Bergsonian 
plunge  into  the  life-flux  which  alone  brings  us 
into  touch  with  ultimate  reality ;  and  if  the 
discursive  understanding  introduces  a  dualism 
between  the  two,  it  is  just  because  thought  must 
ever  lag  behind  life.  And  seeing  that  the 
intuitional  plunge  implies  the  redemption  of  reason, 
the  birth  of  a  new  understanding,  that  reason  will 
have  its  ideal  dogmatic  in  which  all  such  oppo- 
sitions shall  be  transcended.  One  is  aware  that 
to  a  narrowly  moralistic  theology  which  makes 
penitence  the  complete  and  only  expression  of  the 
soul's  relation  to  God,  and  forgiveness  with  its 
consequent  moral  renewal  the  sole  element  in  that 

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Eucken  and  Bergson 

soul's  experience,  this  will  seem  a  departure  from 
moral  realism.  But  while  the  primacy  of  the 
moral  remains  a  living  truth,  the  segregation  of  the 
moral  from  other  aspects  of  the  personality  is 
no  longer  possible,  and  a  theology  which  lacks 
the  element  of  gnosis  answers  neither  to  the 
deeps  in  the  soul  of  man  nor  to  the  revelation 
of  the  Logos. 

These  indications — mere  hints  of  a  prophecy 
which  may  be  modified  at  the  next  bend  of 
the  road  by  the  emergence  of  wider  vistas  to 
human  thought — serve  to  show  that  theology 
cannot  afford  to  keep  aloof  from  a  philo- 
sophical world  in  which  there  are  many  voices 
and  none  without  signification.  If  one  desideratum 
may  be  emphasised  above  many  others,  it  is 
that  theology  should  put  off  a  certain  proud 
"objectivity,"  and  be  content  to  start  along  the 
lines  of  a  psychological  investigation  to  which 
the  individual  and  particular,  the  confusing 
biography  of  the  vaguely  striving  soul,  the 
religious  experience  of  the  humble  and  inarticulate, 
the  many  strange  mystical  cults  which  we  think 
we  can  ignore,  are  sacred  objects  of  inquiry.  It  is 
such  particularities  which  compose  that  religious 
life-flux  into  which  the  theologian  must  plunge  if 
he  would  not  be  left  on  the  dead  shore  with  the 
imaginary  time-stick  of  a  Pauline  paradigm  and 
the  dogmatic  tortoise  of  a  view  based  upon  a 
generalisation.  And  such  a  theology,  applying  its 
own  experimental  principle  to  a  new  philosophy, 

212 


Tehology  and  Recent  Philosophy 

will  not  be  enthralled  by  it,  but  will  have  an 
even  completer  liberty  of  thought  towards  it 
than  towards  the  Christian  documents  and 
crystallisations  of  dogma.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  will  not  seek  in  turn  to  bend  philosophy  to  its 
own  uses.  It  will  not  only  be  free  from  its  domin- 
ation; it  will  also  let  it  go  its  own  way,  not  seeking 
to  manipulate  it  in  the  interests  of  religion.  There 
is  no  apologetic  more  humiliating  than  the 
frantic  attempt  to  make  philosophy  speak  the 
language  of  Canaan.  To  give  it  the  same  inde- 
pendence as  theology  claims  for  itself,  to  use 
it  freely  and  join  it  daringly  in  its  attempts  at 
an  adequate  interpretation  of  the  world,  but  to 
base  its  own  interpretation  upon  its  own  ex- 
perience, is  that  "  better  part  "  which  a  truly 
free  and  "  liberal  "  theology  will  have  to  take  in 
the  days  to  come. 

And  the  moralising  movement  in  philosophy 
will  surely  give  such  a  theology  and  the  preaching  it 
produces  a  chance  by  preparing  the  public  mind 
for  it.  To-day  the  light  is  only  on  the  hills  ; 
to-morrow  it  will  flood  the  valleys,  and  a  way  will 
be  opened  as  never  before  to  a  really  strong  and 
deep  religious  suggestion.  Men  will  realise  that 
if  the  ultimate  reality  does  not  yield  its  secret  to 
intellectual  searching,  it  must  be  because  that 
reality  is  personal — a  Super- person,  if  one  likes 
so  to  call  it — and  can  only  be  known  through 
personal  relations.  And  from  that  position  to  the 
conception  of  a  personality  within  the  race,  who, 

213 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

in  perfect  fellowship  and  correspondence  with  this 
personal  Reality,  can  equate  the  race  with  it 
through  a  supreme  moral  act,  a  life-task  wrought 
out  in  history,  is  not  so  very  large  a  step. 

There  remains  one  thing  to  be  added.  Both 
theology  and  philosophy  build  largely  on  each 
other's  foundations,  and  borrow  material  from 
many  quarters.  Thus  Eucken's  spiritual  life 
could  never  have  been  conceived  apart  from  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  Redemption,  which  underlies 
it  most  surely,  even  where  it  is  construed  in  the 
least  Christian  sense.  Thus,  too,  the  doctrines 
of  the  Trinity  and  the  Incarnation  would  have 
been  lost  but  for  finding  a  congenial  soil  in  the 
philosophical  speculations  of  the  fourth  century. 
But  speaking  ultimately,  it  remains  true  that 
theology  is  autonomous,  and  will  remain  autono- 
mous so  long  as  she  builds  upon  the  foundations  of 
the  revelation  of  Godas  experienced  in  redemption. 
And  so,  while  using  all  the  material  that  science 
and  philosophy  can  supply  to  her  in  ever  growing 
quantity,  she  may,  without  undue  arrogance,  look 
upon  the  new  spiritualisation  of  science  and 
philosophy  as  hers,  in  the  sense  of  being  the 
unconscious  product  of  the  long-continued  presence 
in  the  world  of  that  experience  of  redemption  of 
which  theology  is  the  exponent  and  expression. 
She  can,  therefore,  say  to  a  new  philosophy  of  the 
spiritual  life  which  claims  to  attain  her  end  without 
accepting  her  dogmatic  conditions,  to  a  new 
spiritual  immediacy    which    claims   to    be   able 

214 


Theology  and  Recent  Philosophy 

to    see    God    clearly    without   the  mediator  ship 
of  the  Son  of  God  : — 

"Once  in  a  golden  hour 
I  cast  to  earth  a  seed  ; 
Up  there  comes  a  flower ; 
The  people  said,  a  weed. 

To  and  fro  they  went 

Through  my  golden  bower  ; 
And,  muttering  discontent, 

Cursed  me  and  my  flower. 

Then  it  grew  so  tall, 

It  wore  a  crown  of  light ; 
But  thieves  from  over  the  wall 

Stole  the  seed  by  night. 

Sowed  it  far  and  wide, 

By  every  town  and  tower. 
Till  all  the  people  cried, 

'  Splendid  is  the  flower  i  ' 

Read  my  little  fable — 

He  that  runs  may  read — 
Most  can  raise  the  flower  now, 

For  all  have  got  the  seed." 


215 


Bibliography 

The  following  list  of  the  works  of  Eucken  and 
Bergson,  together  with  a  selection  of  books  and 
pamphlets  dealing  with  their  philosophies,  may 
be  of  use. 

i. — Books  by  Professor  Eucken. 

"  Die  Methode  der  Aristotelischen  Forschung," 
1872. 

"  Die  Grundbegriffe  der  Gegenwart,"  1878  ;  3rd 
edition,  1904,  under  title,  "  Geistige  Stro- 
mungen  der  Gegenwart  "  ;  4th  edition,  1909. 
Translated  under  the  title,  "  Main  Currents 
of  Modern  Thought,"  1911.  (London  :  Fisher 
Unwin,  12s.  6d.  net.). 

"  Geschichte  der  philosophischen  Terminologie," 
1879. 

"  Prolegomena  zu  Forschungen  uber  die  Einheit 
des  Geisteslebens,"  1885. 

"  Beitrage  zur  Geschichte  der  neueren  Philo- 
sophic," 1886  ;  2nd  edition,  1905. 

"  Die  Einheit  des  Geisteslebens  in  Bewusstsein 
und  Tat  der  Menschheit,"  1888. 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

"  Die  Lebensanschauungen  der  grossen  Denker," 
1890  ;  9th  edition,  1911.  Translated  under 
the  title,  "  The  Problem  of  Human  Life," 
1909.  (London :  Fisher  Unwin,  12s.  6d. 
net.). 

"  Der  Kampf  um  einen  Geistigen  Lebensinhalt," 
1896  ;   2nd  edition,  1907. 

"  Der  Wahrheitsgehalt  der  Religion,"  1901  ;  2nd 
edition,  1905  (new  edition  in  preparation). 
Translated  under  the  title,  "  The  Truth  of 
Religion,"  1911.  (London  :  Williams  & 
Norgate,  12s.  6d.  net). 

"  Das  Wesen  der  Religion,"  1901.  Translated  by 
W.  Tudor  Jones. 

"  Thomas  von  Aquino  und  Kant  :  ein  Kampf 
zweier  Welten,"  1901. 

"  Gesammelte  Aufsatze  zur  Philosophie  und 
Lebensanschauung,"    1903. 

"  Grundlinien  einer  neuen  Lebensanschauung," 
1907.  Translated  under  the  title,  "  Life's 
Basis  and  Life's  Ideal,"  1911.  (London  : 
A.  and  C.  Black.     7s.  6d.  net.) 

"  Hauptprobleme  der  Religionsphilosophie  der 
Gegenwart,"  1907  ;  3rd  edition,  1909.  (New- 
edition  in  preparation.) 

"  Der  Sinn  und  Wert  des  Lebens,"  1908  ;  3rd 
edition,  1911.  Translated  under  the  title, 
"  The  Meaning  and  Value  of  Life,"  1909. 
(London  :   A.  and  C.  Black,  3s.  6d.  net.) 


Bibliography 

"  Einfuhrung  in  eine  Philosophic  des  Geistes- 
lebens,"  1908.  Translated  under  the  title, 
"  The  Life  of  the  Spirit."  (London  :  Williams 
and  Norgate,  4s.  6d.  net.) 

"  Christianity  and  the  New  Idealism,"  1910. 
(Harper,  2s.  6d.  net.) 

"  Religion  and  Life."  Essex  Hall  Lecture,  1911. 
(London  :  British  and  Foreign  Unitarian 
Association,  is.  net.) 

"  Konnen  wir  noch  Christen  sein  ?  "  1911.  To  be 
translated  shortly. 

2. — Books  on  Eucken's  Philosophy. 

*'  Rudolf  Eucken's  Philosophy  of  Life, '  by  W.  R. 
Boyce  Gibson.     2nd  edition,  1907.     (London: 
'  A.  and  C.  Black,  3s.  6d.  net.) 

"  Rudolf  Eucken's  Philosophy  of  Religion,"  by 
W.  Tudor  Jones,  1908.     (Wellington,  N.Z.). 

"  Rudolf  Eucken,  der  Erneuerer  des  deutschen 
Idealismus,"  by  Theodor  Kappstein.  (Berlin, 
1909.) 

"  Rudolf  Euckens  Kampf  wider  den  Natural- 
ismus,"  by  Professor  Falckenberg.  Erlanger 
Festschrift,  1901. 

"  Rudolf  Euckens  Welt-  und  Lebensanschauung," 
by  Otto  Siebert,  1904. 

"  Rudolf  Euckens  Theologie  mit  ihren  philo- 
sophischen  Grundlagen  dargestellt,"  by  Hans 
Pohlmann.     Berlin,  1903. 


Eucken  and  Bergson 

"  Der  religiose  Wahrheitsbegriff  in  er  Philosophie 
Rudolf  Euckens,"  by  Karl  Bornhausen. 
Gottingen,  1910. 

"  Rudolf  Euckens  Werk  :  zur  Einfiihrung  in  sein 
Denken  und  Schaffen,"  by  Kurt  Kesseler. 
Bunzlau,  1911. 

"  Rudolf  Euckens  Kampf  um  einen  neuen 
Idealismus,"  by  Emile  Boutroux,  Leipzig, 
1911. 

3. — Books  by  Professor  Bergson. 

"  Les  Donn6es  Imm6diates  de  la  Conscience." 
Paris,  1889.  Translated  under  the  title, 
"  Time  and  Free  Will,"  1910.  (London : 
Sonnenschein,  10s.  6d.  net.) 

"  Matigre  et  M6morie."  Paris,  1896.  Trans- 
lated under  the  title,  "  Matter  and  Memory," 
1911.     (London  :  Sonnenschein,  10s.  6d.  net.) 

"  L' Evolution  Cr6atrice,"  Paris,  1907.  Trans- 
lated under  the  title,  "  Creative  Evolution," 
1911.     (London  :    Macmillan,  10s.  net.) 

"  Introduction  a  la  M6taphysique."  Paris,  1903. 
(Out  of  print,  but  may  be  had  in  a  German 
translation.) 

"  Le  Rire."  Translated  under  the  title, 
"  Laughter  :  an  Essay  in  the  Meaning  of  the 
Comic,"  1911.  (London  :  Macmillan,  3s.  6d. 
net.) 


Bibliography 

Also  the  following  psychological  studies  : — "  Le 
Rave,"  "  L' Effort  Intellectuel,"  and  "  Le 
Souvenir  du  Present  et  la  Fausse  Recon- 
naissance." 

4. — Books  on  Bergson's  Philosophy. 

"  The  Philosophy  of  Bergson,"  by  A.  D.  Lindsay, 
1911.     (London  :    Dent,  5s.  net.) 

"  A  Critical  Exposition  of  Bergson's  Philosophy," 
by  J.  M'Kellar  Stewart,  1911.  (London  : 
Macmillan,  5s.  net.) 

"  Bergson,"  by  Joseph  Solomon,  1911.  (London  : 
Constable,  is.  net.) 

"  An  Examination  of  Bergson's  Philosophy,"  by 
David  Balsillie.  (London  :  Williams  & 
Norgate.     In   preparation.) 

"  A  Pluralistic  Universe,"  by  William  James, 
Lecture  VI.,  1909.  (London  :  Longmans, 
5s.  6d.  net.) 

"  Henri  Bergson :  Choix  de  Texte  avec  Etudes 
du  Systeme  Philosophique,"  by  Rene 
Gillouin.     (Paris  :  2  frs.) 


Index 


Achilles  and  the  tortoise,  143. 

Activism,  64-8  ;  its  relation  to 
Pragmatism,  65  ;  its  theo- 
logical implications,  67-8. 

Anthropomorphism,    174-5- 

Atonement,  176. 

Augustine,  Eucken  on,  48: 

Authority  in  religion,  Dr.  P.  T. 
Forsyth  on,  198. 

Binet  Commission,  130. 

Bergson,  Henri,  his  life  and  in- 
fluence, 128-34  ;  his  influence 
upon  Neo-Catholicism  and 
Syndicalism,  132-4;  his  illus- 
trative style,  134-8 ;  on 
concrete  time,  139-44  ;  on  the 
inadequacy  of  the  intelligence 
to  grasp  the  life-flux,  147-9  ; 
on  Intuition,  149-52  ;  on 
Creative  Evolution,  154^;  on 
Finalism,  156 ;  on  the  elan 
vital,  160-5  ;  on  Teleology, 
161  ;  on  Free  Will,  163-5  ; 
theological  implications  of  his 
philosophy,  168-79. 

Balfour,  Mr.  A.  J.,  on  Bergson, 
160-4. 

Chesterton,  Mr.  G.  K.,  33. 

Christ,  Eucken  on  the  Person 
and  Work  of,  105-18. 

Christianity,  Eucken's  apprecia- 
tion of,  101-3  ;  Eucken's  plea 
for  an  undogmatic,  102. 

Church,  Eucken  on  the,  193. 

Civilisation,  critique  of,  30-4. 

Clough,  Arthur,  H.,  161-7. 


Denney,  Dr.  James,  his  sim- 
plified creed,  199. 

Devenir  riel,  149. 

Dorner,  J.  A.,  188  ;  on  Chris- 
tianity and  reason,  210. 

Elan  Vital,  150, 160-5. 

Epigenesis,  154. 

Evolution,  154 ;  Bergson' s 
Creative,  154-9. 

Eucken,  Rudolf,  his  life  and 
influence,  42-5  ;  his  style,  47  ; 
philosophical  antecedents,  48- 
9  ;  struggle  for  a  new  Idealism, 
50-4  ;  critique  of  Naturalism 
and  Intellectualism,  52-4 ; 
his  "  negative  movement," 
55-9 ;  his  cosmic-personal 
religious  Idealism,  59-61  ; 
his  Activism,  64-8  ;  its 
theological  implications,  67-8 ; 
his  philosophy  of  history, 
68-75  ;  its  theological  implica- 
tions, 75-6  ;  his  attitude  to 
aesthetic  individualism,  77-9  ; 
his  demand  for  a  joyous 
religion,  79-81  ;  his  apparent 
irrationalism,  81  ;  "TheTruth 
of  Religion,"  90-101  ;  his 
attitude  towards  the  mystical 
aspect  of  religion,  94-8  ;  re- 
ligion and  the  absolute 
spiritual  life,  98;  "universal" 
and  "characteristic"  religion, 
62-3,92;  "  KSnnen  Wit  noch 
Christen  Sein  ?  "  101$.  ;  his 
valuation  of  Christianity,  101- 
3  ;  his  attitude  towards  Jesus, 


222 


Index 


Eucken  Rudolf — continued 
io3'5  I  towards  the  Person 
and  Work  of  Christ,  105-18  ; 
towards  miracles,  120 ;  his 
speculative  approach  to  the 
problem  of  religion,  95,  III. 

Finalism,  Bergson's  rejection 
of,  156. 

Free  Will,  Bergson  on,  163-5  ; 
Eucken's  defence  of  Freedom, 
58,  82. 

Forgiveness,  philosophical  inter- 
pretation of,  76. 

Forsyth,  Dr.  P.  T.,  on  moral 
realism,  193 ;  on  authority 
in  religion,  198. 


Gerdtell,  Dr.,  on  Eucken, 
107-8. 

Gibson,  Prof.  Boyce,  on  Eucken, 
59,  65-7. 

God,  anthropomorphic  concep- 
tions of,  174-5 ;  pluralistic 
and  theistic  conceptions  of, 
170-3  ;  God  and  the  world, 
Prof.    James   Ward   on,    170, 

173- 
Gorky,  Maxim  "  Comrades,"  80. 

Harnack,  Prof.  A.,  on  the 
certitudo  salutis,  189. 

Haeckel,  Prof.  E.,  on  the  mys- 
teries of  science,  23. 

Hegel,  25, 49,  55-6  ;  his  influence 
on  theology,  185. 

History,  Eucken's  philosophy 
of,  68-75;  its  value  for  God, 
208. 

Hugel,  Baron  von,  quoted,  207. 

Ibse.v,  his  moral  realism,  186. 
Incarnation,  the,  and  Creative 

Evolution,  175-9,  206. 
Instinct,  158. 


Intellectualism,  superficial  criti- 
cism of,  25 ;  as  truly 
necessitarian  as  Naturalism, 
26,  36 ;    Bergson  on,  197-8. 

Intellect,  function  of,  153. 

Intuition,  Bergson  on,  142,  150- 
60. 

I  nationalism,  Eucken's  appar- 
ent, 58,  209. 

James,  Prof.  William,  on  re- 
ligious experience,  34-5 ;  on 
Bergson,  168. 

Jesus,  Eucken  on,  103-5. 

Joy,  lack  of  in  modern  religion, 
80. 

Kierkegaard,  Soren,  186. 
Kdnnen      Wir     noch      Christen 
Sein  ?  "  ioi#. 

"  Liberal"  Christianity,  Euc- 
ken's attitude  towards,  105 
note. 

Lotze,  H.,  on  history,  169. 

Macpherson,  Mr.  H.,  on  In- 
tellectualism, 26. 

Maeterlinck,  32  ;  "  The  Past," 
70-1. 

Moral,  primacy  of  the,  in  know- 
ledge, 36. 

Myers,  F.  W.  H.,  32. 

Mysticism,  Eucken's  relation  to, 
94-5- 

Naturalism,  23-4  ;   26,  51-3. 
Neandcr,   A.,   on  experience  of 

redemption    188. 
Nietzsche,     21  ;      on     modern 

culture,  31  ;   Mr.  G.  H.  Wells, 

77  ;     Eucken    on    Nietzsche, 

77-9- 

"  Offen'ce  "     of     the     Gospel, 

202-6. 
Orthodoxy,     theological,     in 

modern  Germany,  105. 


223 


Index 


Pascal,  Blaise,  54,  57. 

Paulinism,  195-6. 

Pragmatism,  popular,  27 ;    not 

a  "  system  "  28  ;  Eucken  and 

Pragmatism,  65. 
Prayer,  95-8. 

RAGEOT,[Gaston,  on  Bergson,  152. 
Reason,  doctrine  of  the  spiritual, 

209-11. 
Redemption,  experience  of,  187- 

90;    194/7. 
Ritschl,  A.,  190. 
Ritschlianism,,  211. 
Rowland,   Dr.    Eleanor   Harris, 

on  Prayer,  96. 

Schiller,     Dr.     F.    C.   S.,   on 
primacy  of  the  moral,  37. 


Schroiedel,   Prof.,   200. 
Sigwart,  on  intellectualism,  149. 

Teleology,  Bergson  on,  161. 
Theology,  its  relation  to  philo- 
sophy, 184-6,  212-15. 
Time,  concrete,  143  /. 

Underhill,    Miss    Evelyn,   on 
Bergson,  166. 

Voluntarism,  29. 

Ward,  Prof.  James,  170,  173. 

Wendland,  Prof.,  109. 

Widney,  Dr.,  on  modern  civili- 

isation,  32. 
Wrede,  W.,  on  Paul,  113. 


HKADLEY  BROTHERS'  BISHOPSGATE,  E.C.  ;  AND  ASHFORD,  KENT. 


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